Locomotion (The Unfinished Path) II
Boris Camaca
23.04.26 - 23.05.26Locomotion (The Unfinished Path) II is the second solo exhibition by French photographer Boris Camaca at NıCOLETTı.
The exhibition builds on the cycle of works Camaca developed for his first institutional solo show, held at Plato, Ostrava, CZ, in 2025–26, where he presented a retrospective of photographs drawn from both his personal archives and his editorials as a fashion photographer. Organised and paired in a seemingly random order, the images were inserted into double-sided wooden frames hanging perpendicularly to the walls, generating an intense superposition of images that physically enacted the layering of pop-up windows on computer screens.
At NıCOLETTı, Camaca reshuffles a selection of these works and presents them in a linear succession that rather evokes rows of books or magazines archived in a library, their covers ranging from lifestyle publications to amateur National Geographic-style photojournalism. With metal labels indicating the names of the depicted subjects, as well as the time and place where they were shot, Camaca’s works reflects upon systems of categorisation of images while conjuring the tension between control and contingency inherent to photography, where the final composition inevitably results from a negotiation between human intention and machine logic, between the choice of motifs and the system of lenses, sensors, timings, and adjustments through which images are produced.
Throughout the exhibition, Camaca interrogates both the technical system of photography and the hierarchy of iconographies by associating images that were either meticulously staged or taken spontaneously – a highly stylised forum for Balenciaga’s Summer 2020 show is paired with mallard ducks photographed during a walk in Paris, while a photograph of actor Félix Maritaud (who played Robin Campillo’s film 120 bpm, 2017) grabbing grass in a garden in Noisy-le-Sec is juxptaposed with an editorial made for Masses in 2021. Through these gestures, Camaca brings to the same plane a variety of subjects and techniques, approaching photography as a space of calibrated certainty that produces what he calls, in reference to Paul Auster, a ‘music of chance’.
Within this framework, the only common ground between the images is movement, which operates in the exhibition as both formal and critical principle. Many of the works depict bodies in motion – walking, running, shifting –, an interest Camaca relates to his study of chronophotographic experiments such as those of Eadweard Muybridge. Here, however, he departs from any type of analytical deconstructions of movement – rather than treating the image as a form capture, his work considers the recording of physical gestures as an ethical operation, one that entails the subject’s participation. In so doing, Camaca explores photography as a shared process in which movement functions as a form of consent – whether the subject is a drone, a cat, or a fashion model.
The framing and hanging of the photographs extend this logic of movement into space. The double-sided frames generate a dual mode of perception: viewers may navigate the exhibition in different directions, producing shifting narratives and encounters. Seen from the side, the works resolve into lines and rhythms, suggesting a score or coded language. This oscillation between image and structure introduces a sculptural dimension, aligning with the artist’s growing interest in sculpture and spatial composition.
Through a series in which movement – physical, perceptual, and conceptual – becomes the central condition through which images are produced, encountered, and understood, Locomotion (The Unfinished Path) II posits photography as a dynamic process in which bodies, machines, and time exist within a continuously shifting field of relations.