Olivier Meyer is a French photographer born in 1957. He lives and works in Paris, France.

Biography

His photo-journalism was first published in France-Soir Magazine and subsequently in the daily

France Soir ''France Soir'' ( en, France Evening) was a French newspaper that prospered in physical format during the 1950s and 1960s, reaching a circulation of 1.5 million in the 1950s. It declined rapidly under various owners and was relaunched as a popul ...

in 1981. Starting from 1989, a selection of his black and white photographs of Paris were produced as postcards by Éditions Marion Valentine. He often met the photographer

Édouard Boubat Édouard Boubat (; 13 September 1923 – 30 June 1999) was a French photojournalist and art photographer. Life and work Boubat was born in Montmartre, Paris. He studied typography and graphic arts at the École Estienne and worked for a print ...

on the

île Saint-Louis Île Saint-Louis (), eleven hectares in size, is one of two natural islands in the Seine river, in Paris, France (the other natural island is the Île de la Cité, where Notre-Dame de Paris is located). Île Saint-Louis is connected to the re ...

in Paris and at the Publimod laboratory in the rue du Roi de Sicile. Having seen his photographs, Boubat told him: "at the end of the day, we are all doing the same thing...". When featured in the magazine Le Monde 2 in 2007 his work was noticed by gallery owner Charles Zalber who exhibited his photographs at the gallery Photo4 managed by Victor Mendès.

Work

His work is in the tradition of humanist photography and

Street photography Street photography (also sometimes called candid photography) is photography conducted for art or enquiry that features unmediated chance encounters and random incidents within public places. Although there is a difference between street and ca ...

using the same material as many of the forerunners of this style: Kodak Tri-X black and white film, silver bromide prints on baryta paper,

Leica M3 The Leica M3 is a 35 mm rangefinder camera by Ernst Leitz GmbH (now Leica Camera AG), introduced in 1954. It was a new starting point for Leitz, which until then had only produced screw-mount Leica cameras that were incremental improvements to ...

Leica M4 The Leica M4 is a 35 mm rangefinder camera produced by Ernst Leitz GmbH. Leica M4 The M4 started production in November 1966, as the direct successor of the M3 and M2, featuring framelines for 35 mm, 50 mm, 90 mm and 135 ...

with a 50 or 90 mm lens. The thin black line surrounding the prints shows that the picture has not been cropped. His inspiration came from

Henri Cartier-Bresson Henri Cartier-Bresson (; 22 August 1908 – 3 August 2004) was a French humanist photographer considered a master of candid photography, and an early user of 35mm film. He pioneered the genre of street photography, and viewed photography as cap ...

Saul Leiter Saul Leiter (December 3, 1923 – November 26, 2013) was an American photographer and painter whose early work in the 1940s and 1950s was an important contribution to what came to be recognized as the New York school of photography.Jane Livin ...

. His portrait of Aguigui Mouna sticking his tongue out like

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...

, published in postcard form in 1988, and subsequently as an illustration, in a book by Anne Gallois served as a blueprint for a stencil work by the artist

Jef Aérosol Jef Aérosol is the pseudonym of Jean-François Perroy (born January 15, 1957),Bio (English)
Jefaerosol.com

in 2006 subsequently reproduced in the book ''VIP''. His photographs were exhibited at the Photo4 gallery in Paris in April 2008, and again in January 2010 together with photographs by Ralph Gibson. In September 2012, the Dupif gallery in Paris held an exclusive exhibition of his work to mark the publication of the book ''Paris, Nothing new''.

Collections

* Musée juif de Belgique, Bruxelles, Belgium * Musée de la photographie à Charleroi, Belgium

Bibliography

* Olivier Meyer, Paris Nothing new, Éditions Letzalem, 2012. A book of black and white photographs of Paris, some recent, but with a choice of subjects and backgrounds which avoid any reference to the modern world, hence the subtitle ''Nothing new''. * Olivier Meyer, Kotel Beyond the wall, Éditions Letzalem, 2012. A collection of black and white photographs punctuated with questions about the Kotel also called the

Western Wall The Western Wall ( he, הַכּוֹתֶל הַמַּעֲרָבִי, HaKotel HaMa'aravi, the western wall, often shortened to the Kotel or Kosel), known in the West as the Wailing Wall, and in Islam as the Buraq Wall (Arabic: حَائِط � ...

, remnant of the

Temple in Jerusalem The Temple in Jerusalem, or alternatively the Holy Temple (; , ), refers to the two now-destroyed religious structures that served as the central places of worship for Israelites and Jews on the modern-day Temple Mount in the Old City of Jeru ...

. The subtitle ''Beyond the wall'' refers to the questions which evoke a spirituality capable of transcending a wall made of stones. * Olivier Meyer, London Nothing new, Éditions Letzalem, 2015. A book of black and white photographs of London, foreword by the collector Alain Dercourt, interview of the photographer by Patricia Frischer, Founder and Coordinator of the San Diego Visual Art Network, California.

References

* This article has been translated from the French Wikipedia

External links

official website (http://www.omeyer.fr)

official reference : Bibliothèque nationale de France (http://catalogue.bnf/ark:/12148/cb165384862)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Meyer, Olivier French photographers Street photographers 1957 births Living people