Antoine Martineau’s black-and-white landscapes are silent, often deserted. Though these coastal atmospheres may feel familiar, they bear the enigmatic traces of human presence — of lives, encounters, and activity — imbuing the images with a quiet, unspoken mystery. Le Sable masquerades as snow, absorbs the water, and crackles under a white sun; the sky dances, darkens, shapes the land, and glows with a pale moon; the water quivers, trembles, and shimmers.

Here, black and white intensifies a paradoxical sense of serenity and abandonment — an emotional charge Martineau also explores through objects. Oyster cups, stacked and lined up, lose their function to become pure motifs, rhythmically abstracted through delicate gradations of grey. The remnants of a meal glimpsed through a window, distorted by layers of reflection, evoke intrigue. A still life — a vanitas, perhaps? A fleeting trace of our physical existence… or the blurred sensation of an accidental absence.

Martineau’s photography is deeply rooted in his native land — particularly in Les Sables-d’Olonne and the lives of those who inhabit it. His portrait series Marins Sablais is a powerful tribute to the men of the sea. Black and white elevates their expressions, their gazes, their postures. These unknown sailors, captains, divers stare straight into the lens — into us — with legendary faces shaped by the sea. Sablais identity is also female. The proximity — even intimacy — captured in the portraits of women young and old in traditional costume, their delicate coifs like birds, like smiles, like medallions, tells another story. Fine skin, sun-worn and lined, carries the history of the fishermen’s wives and daughters.