Bernard PLOSSU

Bernard Plossu, born in 1945 in Đà Lạt, South Vietnam, is considered one of the major figures of contemporary French photography. Introduced to photography at an early age by his father during a journey across the Sahara with a Kodak Brownie Flash camera, he developed a visual sensibility deeply influenced by both travel and cinema, discovering filmmakers such as Dreyer, Bergman, Buñuel, Satyajit Ray and the French New Wave during his teenage years.

In 1965, he travelled to Mexico as part of a British expedition documenting the Chiapas jungle. This formative experience allowed him to define his photographic language and later resulted in the cult publication Le Voyage mexicain, released in 1979 by Contrejour editions. From then on, travel became central to his practice: the United States, India, the Sahara, Italy, Portugal and France all became territories for his wandering and deeply personal photography.

Plossu developed what he described as a “surbanalist” approach, revealing the quiet poetry and emotional intensity hidden within ordinary life. Far from spectacular or purely documentary photography, his work privileges sensation, memory and the freedom of wandering observation. Moving between color and black-and-white photography, he created a body of work closely tied to the development of contemporary French photography.

In 1986, he married the Spanish photographer Françoise Nuñez, with whom he had two children, Joaquim and Manuela. His family frequently appears in some of his most iconic images. After decades of travelling around the world, he now lives in La Ciotat, France, where he continues to photograph landscapes, everyday moments and intimate fragments of life.