Quick Facts
Biography
Olivier Meyer is a contemporary 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 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 on the île Saint-Louis 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 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 or Leica M4 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, Édouard Boubat, Saul Leiter. His portrait of Aguigui Mouna sticking his tongue out like Albert Einstein, 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 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