Stéphane Couturier

STÉPHANE COUTURIER (Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, 1957)
"Seoul Yoido Dong, 1998.
Photograph.
Size: 127 x 107 cm; 133 x 112 cm (frame).
Stéphane Couturier dedicated a series of photographs to the South Korean capital, as well as to other cities, in which his interest in abstracting urban details is evident. He deals with the subject of metropolitan transformations from a unique perspective and is considered the leading French exponent of "urban archaeology", as is Thomas Struth in the German context. He began exhibiting urban themes in Parisian galleries in the mid-1990s.
Specialised in architectural photography, he lives and works in Paris. He was awarded the Niépce Prize in 2003. Stéphane Couturier's work, which came to light with his series on the Renault factory in Boulogne-Billancourt, is essentially composed of large-format photographs taken with a camera or medium format, in which the viewer's eye is lost, captivated by the details. The strength of his images comes from this visual play based exclusively on film, until his recent series Melting Point, taken at the Toyota factory in Valenciennes. Here he experimented with the fusion of 2 previously scanned images; the result is a profusion of richly coloured details that magically achieves a great coherence. Stéphane Couturier has progressively turned towards artistic photography: his photographs of building sites reveal an organic city in transformation and colour, sometimes in giant diptychs or triptychs. In Landscape, he focuses on the new cities of California, but always under a cloudy sky that overwhelms the different shots. His work has been exhibited at the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris (2004), the Seoul Museum of Art (2005), the Moscow Museum of Architecture (2006), the International Center of Photography in New York (2006), the Hôtel des Arts in Toulon (2014), the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris (2015), the Musée Nicéphore Niepce in Châlon sur Saône (2016), the Musée de la Photographie in Charleroi, Belgium (2017) and the Musée Fernand Léger in Biot (2018). His work has also been published in several books. He is represented by Galerie Particulière 1 in Paris, Benrubi Gallery in New York, Galerie Kornfeld in Berlin and Galerie Christophe Guye in Zurich. In May 2018, Stéphane Couturier signed a petition with leading personalities from the world of culture to boycott the joint "France-Israel" cultural season, which, according to the petition, serves as a "showcase" for the State of Israel to the detriment of the Palestinian people. Stéphane Couturier has participated in numerous exhibitions, some of which are listed here: 2021 Stéphane Couturier, Christophe Guye Galerie, Zurich, Switzerland 2016 Alger, Climat de France, Musée Nicéphore-Niépce, Chalon-sur-Saône, France Anaklasis, La Galerie Particulière, Paris, France; Paris Photo, Galerie Particulière Booth, Grand Palais, Paris, France.