Bar des Muses, Paris 3rd: shooting cocktails in an 18th-century theatre kept in the dark

Bar des Muses, and its Boudoir, sit at 6 rue de Saintonge in the 3rd arrondissement, inside a four-star hotel of the Elegancia Hotels group with a private spa. The bar occupies an 18th-century theatre, with an atrium used for performances: burlesque cabaret once a month, resident DJs during the week, and signature cocktails whose service is itself staged. The house opens daily from 6pm to 11.30pm. The commission came from the group’s head of brand strategy, with in-house art direction; the brief was sent on 18 March 2025 and followed by a preparation call, the art director having built her prop list in a shared sheet.

A bar that opens at six and trades on darkness is not photographed like a dining room. There is no daylight, no house lighting to speak of, and the room is deliberately kept dark: the only sources are candles, a lit menu holder and a few sconces. Adding flash would have rendered a different room from the one guests sit in. The subjects themselves added to it: glasses, which is to say surfaces that reflect everything around them, photographer included.

The session was built around the existing sources rather than against them. Candles served as the key light on the table scenes, with focus set on whatever held still, since a flame does not. The lit menu holder and the gold curtain supplied the backgrounds. Glasses were shot close, the angle chosen so that the reflection in the glass returns nothing but the room. The service gestures — gold powder dusted over the long drink, two glasses held out, two spoons meeting over the same dessert — were taken as they happened, because the ritual of service is part of what the house sells. The prop list supplied in advance meant nothing had to be decided on site.

A set of cocktails and table scenes, framed vertical for the property’s social channels, with still lifes usable on the menu and the website. A second session followed the first.

The images are made for the communication of the venue and its group. Releases are on file for everyone appearing in frame.

The collaboration carried on with a second session, in the continuity of the first. The bar work is set out on the cocktail bar photographer in Paris page, and the hotel side on the hotel photographer in Paris page.