The term visual silence was coined by Margaux Guillemard in the thesis Beyond the Black Image. A liberating encounter between the spectator and sound. In her study, she uses the term visual silence to refer to the relationship between the absence of image and the sound narrative - and the impact this aesthetic choice has on the imagination and creativity of the spectator. In her research, she looks at moments of total absence of visual representation through the example of the black screen, the image without an image, comparing an absence or lack of representation with the concept of silence.
Her study examines a number of films, including Marguerite Duras’ L'Homme Atlantique – a film with almost no images – and my film Belleville Baby, which contains a number of black scenes. Margaux Guillemard's text proposed new ways of seeing and above all listening to film.