As Paris Photo 2025 unfolded across the city, one of its most intimate and compelling moments appeared above the rooftops: Salon Nimette’s two-day exhibition dedicated to Marguerite Bornhauser and her incandescent series We Are Melting. Held on November 13–14, 2025, just steps from the Grand Palais, the event brought together collectors, editors, and artists for a close look at a project that transforms the language of color into a poetic testimony of environmental change.
Marguerite Bornhauser: an intimate encounter at Salon Nimette
Conceived specifically for Paris Photo, the exhibition invited audiences into the refined, domestic setting of Nimette—an apartment-salon known for staging cross-disciplinary conversations. Here, Bornhauser presented a constellation of photographs fused with hand-painted glass, creating hybrid objects that hovered between sculpture, stained glass, and photographic print.
The concept behind ‘We Are Melting’
At the heart of the exhibition was We Are Melting, an ongoing body of work developed between 2023 and 2025. Rather than relying on scientific imagery, Bornhauser approached climate change through a sensory vocabulary of color. She explored the escalating temperatures through warm, molten gradients and the slow erosion of icy landscapes through electric blues. The works, created using both the first and last frames of film rolls, suggested a temporal arc—from emergence to dissolution—mirroring the fragility of ecosystems under pressure.
An artist’s method rooted in color and perception
Bornhauser’s method has long revolved around the emotional and perceptual power of color. Trained in literature, journalism, and later photography in Arles, she developed a practice that sits between observation and abstraction. Her technique often includes sequencing images, creating rhythmic chromatic narratives, and juxtaposing everyday details to reveal unexpected visual correspondences.
In We Are Melting, this approach reached a sculptural dimension. By layering photographic prints with hand-painted glass, she transformed color into an embodied language—one that doesn’t merely depict climate change but makes viewers feel its slow, inexorable movement.
MARGUERITE BORNHAUSER
We are melting, 2025
