For French photographer and filmmaker Thomas Blanchard, the words “joy,” “grief,” “fear,” and “longing” do little to express the nuanced and visceral sensations that they connote. For The Colors of Feelings, he taps into a more primal and intuitive realm to bring emotions to life through imagery. Through an alchemy of paint, honey, cinnamon, oil, and milk, he constructs macro scenes that move in turn from harmony to discord and back again. Our feelings and responses, he suggests, aren’t solid but diaphanous and ever-changing; like paint and oil, agony and ecstasy can overlap to become something new and unnamable. In the end, implies Blanchard, it all commingles, and our state of mind—no matter how hard we try to control it—never stands still.

The music featured in The Colors of Feelings was composed by Max Richter.