Pierre-Yves Cruaud
BBA Gallery presents While the Shadows Dream Upright, a debut solo exhibition by French photographer Pierre-Yves Cruaud, joint 1st Prize Winner of the 2025 BBA Photography Prize. The exhibition presents two interconnected photographic series that challenge our perception of reality, memory, and the nocturnal landscape.
Image gallery
While the Shadows Dream Upright
In While the Shadows Dream Upright, Cruaud explores the night not merely as an absence of light, but as a fertile psychological space where memory and reality blur.
Drawing formal inspiration from minimalist painting, Cruaud's highly precise compositions isolate fragments of the world as daylight recedes, capturing the transition where the familiar becomes strange and poetic.
The exhibition’s title pays homage to the surrealist philosophy of René Magritte, utilizing deliberate cognitive shifts to challenge the viewer's habitual reading of an image. Cruaud's darkroom and digital practices treat the photographic surface as an enigmatic threshold—oscillating between documentation and dream state. By stripping away unnecessary environmental context, his works function as quiet visual poems, inviting viewers to explore the vital, unsettling beauty found within the shadows.
Opening Reception: Saturday, July 4, 2026; 18:00–21:00
Exhibition Dates: July 4–August 1, 2026,
TUESDAY – SATURDAY 12:00 - 18:00
