France Photographers

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce was born in 1765 in Chalon-sur-Saône, Burgundy, France.

Daguerre began as a theatrical designer who ran a large diorama theater in Paris.

Charles Marville began as an illustrator and engraver before turning to photography.

Gustave Le Gray, trained first as a painter in Paris, turned to photography in the late 1840s and opened the school that helped shape figures such as Nadar.

Nadar, born Gaspard-Felix Tournachon, entered photography around 1853 after careers in journalism and caricature had already connected him to the leading figures of French culture.

Etienne-Jules Marey approached photography through physiology.

Atget did not take up the camera until around 1897, when he was about forty.

Robert Demachy argued that nature might be beautiful, but it could not become art without the intervention of the artist.

Paul Geniaux was a French photographer associated with late Pictorialism and with the broader effort to secure photography's standing as an art at the turn of the twentieth century.

Jacques-Henri Lartigue began photographing as a child and produced a body of work that seems to crystallize the speed, leisure, and visual exhilaration of early twentieth-century modernity.

Louis Vaire is an identity-audit entry.

Henri Cartier-Bresson encountered Surrealism from 1926 onward and, through Rene Crevel, came into contact with Andre Breton.

Marcel Bovis was a French photographer whose work is closely tied to Paris, urban night scenes, and the poetic possibilities of the modern city.

Robert Doisneau is often remembered through the mythology of poetic Paris, but his work is more than sentimental street charm.

French artist born in 1963, active across websites, publishing, drawing, collage, photography, installation, and video.

French artist born in 1955 in Reims, based in Paris; works across photography, objects, sculpture, and installations, though photography was central to his emergence on the contemporary art scene.

French photographer born in 1968.

French photographer born in 1946, working closely with birds and their habitats over several decades.

French artist born in Paris in 1968, working with photography, video, and performance.

French and British artist born in 1969, working across film, photography, installation, and artist books.

French artist born in 1953, working across photography, text, installation, and performative investigation.

French photographer born in 1975, known for serial portrait projects on uniforms, ritual groups, masquerades, and collective identity.

French photographer born in 1962, first known as a photojournalist and later as a maker of large-scale museum photographs of war, politics, and historical crisis.

French artist born in 1970, working with photography, film, video, and installation.

French artist born in 1964, known for photography that stages encounters between hyperreal description and artifice.