Stephane Couturier

The photographs of Stephane Couturier, whether of construction sites in Berlin, demolished buildings in Havana, or an automobile assembly plant in Valenciennes, are all about transformation, a subject he explores with a strong sense of design and composition and a brilliant sense of color.  

Couturier began his career as an art photographer in his native Paris in the early 1990’s and has since made significant bodies of work in Dresden, Berlin, Seoul, Moscow, Beijing, and most recently Havana.  His  images are characterized by a  vast array of visual information, an extraordinary clarity, and a poetry of conception that separates him from his contemporary German counterparts. He searches for visually complex sites exhibiting dynamic vertical and horizontal lines, elegant curves, and brilliant effects of light and indigenous color. 

Stephane Couturier was born in Neuilly sur Seine, France, in 1957. His photographs have been featured at many international venues, among which are the Moscow Biennial, the ICP triennial, Centre Georges Pompidou, Musem of Modern Art, Luxembourg and the Museum of Photography, Charleroi, Belgium.  

He is also in most major American museums and collections. The Art Institute of Chicago, Cleveland Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Yale Art Gallery, Nelson-Atkins Museum, The National Gallery of Art and Santa Barbara Museum of Art, as well as the LaSalle National Bank corporate collection. In 2004, the Bibliotheque National in Paris featured a major retrospective of his career to date.