Based on Lucien Hervé's own accounts, the film retraces the artistic path of the photographer, including his encounter with the architect Le Corbusier, for whom he was the official photographer. If his work seems so singular, it's because Hervé was a precursor, a visionary who sublimated the ordinary so as to confront the question of the mystery of esthetics head on, that question which is the dialog between shadow and light.