Fade to blue

Graphic designer Charles Villa, who founded Paris-based Studio Charles Villa, is driven by curiosity and has a keen eye for observation. This watchful approach is how his latest book project started. During the pandemic, on many walks passing by shops and a variety of printed visuals, he began noticing what happens to images when they are exposed to the sun for too long. Villa, with an interest in the printing process, realised that the yellow and magenta ink colours of older images fade away in sunlight, leaving the cyan and black inks prevalent in the photos, giving them a distinct blue hue.

With this observation regarding the phenomenon of fading, he started a collection of blue images, making an Instagram page to share these visuals and serve as a call to participate, encouraging people to send in their blue images. Villa also received a grant from CNAP (Centre National des Arts Plastiques) for this research. To explain his approach, Villa says, ‘I always try to start with an intuition – with something I notice and try to collect it. During this collection, I keep thinking, “What can I do with this?”’.

In 2023, after he photographed hundreds of his own images and gathered thousands of images from all over the globe, Villa decided to try and classify the current database of pictures by grades of colour and organise these into book form. This is how the publication Image Bleue was born.

Written in French (in cyan text) and English (in black text), the book features a foreword by art historian Tony Côme which poetically states, ‘They are invisible markers. Such is the language of blue images. And decades, days, and the daylight pass over them. For the becoming-blue that threatens—and unites—them stems from a high degree of irradiation.’

Also included in the book is a scientifically-focused interview featuring author and evolutionary biologist Alexa Sadier and author and astronomer Johan Mazoyer entitled ‘Bleu des yeux, bleu du ciel, bleu des images’ (‘Blue eyes, Blue sky, Blue images’).

Charles Villa is keen to keep his research going through a residency at CNEAI at the floating house in Normandy in 2024. Image Bleue is an ongoing research project, with people still sending in their blue images. Villa states, ‘It’s a way to look at the city and our visual environment.’