About Alexandre Morelli

When looking at Alexandre Morelli’s photographs, color immediately asserts itself as a raw material—an essential component of his visual language. Sometimes it recedes, as in the misty tones and impressionistic vibrations of the Dawning presbyotia series; at other times it is embraced head-on, bright and graphic, as in Balneotherapy, guiding the viewer’s eye even before the subject. With Corners, color also becomes the basis for mosaics of flat, chromatic fields that verge on abstraction.

Color runs through his work as a driving force that structures each image. Whether capturing a sun-soaked shoreline, a foggy detail at dawn, or a quiet corner of a wall bathed in silence, color becomes the thread of a sensitive visual language, inviting the viewer to see beyond the motif.


It was while discovering the Autochromes at the Albert Kahn Museum that Alexandre Morelli was struck by the contemporary quality of these early photographs and by the sense of time they evoked in him. He then came to understand the documentary power of photography and chose it as his primary means of creative expression.

In 2014, he exhibited for the first time with Les gens d’Issy sont nés là-bas, a project aimed at mapping the origins of the shopkeepers on the street where he lived. Two years later, he moved away from the ultra-realistic look of contemporary imagery and presented Presbytie matinale and Coins perdus, two pictorial photographic projects. Playing on the tension between painting and photography, he conceived these series as trompe-l’œil: what exactly are we looking at? Between the two mediums, which one is being offered? Since then, he has sought to bring reality and imagination together, precisely where pictorial boundaries overlap.

Selected dates

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  May 2014 – The Cercle des Artistes de la Ville de Paris awards him the Photography Prize.
  
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  May 2017 – His photograph Métro Opéra is selected for the exhibition La ville dans toutes ses couleurs, organized by RATP and Magnum Photos, and displayed for several months in Paris metro stations.
  
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  November 2019 – LensCulture awards him the Street Photography Awards 2019 – Juror’s Pick and exhibits Presbytie matinale at Galerie Joseph.
  
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  June 2023 – Alexandre Morelli is invited for a one-month artist residency at the Maison du Patrimoine François Flohic in Six-Fours (France). He presents Balneotherapy, a body of work produced in the Var region, exhibited at the Batterie du Cap Nègre during the summer of 2025.