Launch of the Ocean Arts Biennial with the Charles Negre Museum of Photography

As part of the organization of the 3rd United Nations Conference on the Ocean, held from June 9 to 13, 2025, in Nice, the Biennale des Arts organized by the City of Nice has been exceptionally renamed the Biennale des Arts et de l'Océan. This event, well-known to art lovers and the general public, brings together numerous cultural, institutional, and partner organizations. The Charles Nègre Museum of Photography will present the exhibition "Mers et Mystères" by Laurent Ballesta to share his aesthetic and poetic vision of a dangerously threatened universe. Laurent Ballesta illustrates the underwater world with a perspective that is both naturalistic and artistic. His photographic work is an aesthetic adventure comparable to that of creators and performers, with the added challenge of sporting and scientific rigor.

A world specialist in underwater photography, Laurent Ballesta is the only person to have brought back images from unexplored depths. A biologist and naturalist by training, and a scientific advisor for the Ushuaïa Nature program for twelve years, he is deeply involved in the environmental promotion of marine heritage. His diving experience also allowed him to capture the first photograph taken by a diver, of the coelacanth in its natural environment, a 400-million-year-old fossil fish.

Laurent Ballesta's photographs explore the relationships between aesthetics, forms, movements, and the sensory in the marine environment, revealed through a more abstract prism. His work has received several awards, including the Palme d'Or at the World Underwater Image Festival.

The Seas and Mysteries exhibition, composed of three parts, takes us on a journey beneath the ice of the Adélie Sea, revealing the marine fauna and lush deep gardens of Antarctica, witnessing the breeding ballet of groupers that attract more than 700 sharks at night to a Pacific atoll, and discovering the depths of a new world, another planet, the Mediterranean Planet.