Fouquet's Paris: the classics of Joy Bar, starting with the Negroni

Fouquet's has kept time with the Champs-Élysées since 1899. The brasserie is the face everyone knows. Behind it, the hotel holds a more intimate address: Joy. On the restaurant side, alcoves lined with a library of art books and an inner garden, away from the bustle of the Golden Triangle. On the bar side, a counter that runs independently of the dining room, open from morning until late at night.

This series is about that bar. Not the façade, not the legend: the work that happens behind the marble.

Choosing a single cocktail to carry the whole series was deliberate. The Negroni is the classic a bar cannot disguise: three ingredients, no garnish to hide an approximation, a colour that has to hold in the glass and on screen alike. Photographing it means photographing the discipline of a counter.

The series follows it from start to finish, from the jigger to the glass set down on the side table.

In a hotel bar of this standing, guests pay for the gesture as much as for the drink. Shots of hands matter as much as shots of glasses: the bar spoon turning in the mixing glass, the strainer holding back the ice as the drink is poured. They show that here, cocktails are stirred, strained and served in front of you.

An orange twist pressed over the glass releases a mist of oils that lasts only a moment. It is the detail guests smell before they taste, and the hardest one to show. The light was set so those droplets stand out against the dark background, while the large ice cube keeps its clarity inside the red of the drink.

Joy Bar has a very recognisable palette: a red marble counter veined with white, a plum velvet bar front studded with brass, pleated lampshades above a wall of bottles. Rather than photographing the room separately, the series brings these materials into every frame. One Negroni on the marble, another on a lacquered side table against the velvet: the glass becomes proof of the place.

Around the Negroni, the series covers the other registers of a classic menu: a citrus long drink served over ice, an orange cocktail in a stemmed glass, and an amber cocktail served in a coupe on a metal counter, in the bar's golden light. Each glass shape gets its own camera height and its own handling of reflections.

Eleven images, all in portrait format, made to be used as they are: the venue's menu and website, social media, press. Wide shots to place the bar, gesture shots to tell the story of service, product shots for each cocktail.

It is the same approach as at Bar des Muses in the Marais or at the Nikka Perfect Serve finals: photographing a Paris bar through what it serves. For a similar project, see beverage and spirits photography or hotel photographer in Paris.