Ninety-one springs and always with a camera in his hands. Ninety-one years old and still with a keen eye. If you don't know Denis Brihat, two exhibitions - one at the Camera Obscura Gallery and the other at the BNF - invite you to discover the militant and demanding work of this internationally renowned French photographer, yet so little known to the general public, who has always, and still, worked with silver. A work turned towards nature, which he has made his favourite theme. The Camera Obscura gallery offers an exceptional collection of Denis Brihat's great classics by this alchemist of the print run, as well as some unpublished ones. The materiality he lends to images, the form he decides to give to his photographs is therefore at the heart of his concerns. Master of the printing, he knows how to work perfectly with photographic material and decides, for each negative, on an ideal shape that he will want unique. This exhibition highlights a life devoted to the recognition of photography as an art in its own right. This recognition is now a given, but it has not always been so and Denis Brihat was, in France, a pioneer in this history. In March 1965, Denis Brihat presented an exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, which included about a hundred of what he called "photographic paintings". The reference to painting is quite obvious, but applies to the fact that these photographs are designed specifically for the wall, not for illustration. Brihat does not intend to imitate painting, but to claim for his work the status of a work of art; an object and not only an image. The tone was set.