Vincent Fournier Burkina Faso, b. 1970

Vincent Fournier is a French photographer whose work explores the past, present and future in relation to utopian ideas of space travel; how has the past influenced the present? What are expectations for the future and has the future already happened?

After an education in both sociology and the visual arts, Fournier studied at the National School of Photography in Arles to obtain his diploma in 1997 before working as a creative director and photographer within the advertising and film industry. In 2004, he left to travel around the world which would provide the space and time to realise his first series, Tour Operator. This was also the starting point of many characteristics that now define Fournier’s practice; a shrewd attention to architectural form, a precise, rudimentary aesthetic and a compulsion to render contrasts in scale. 

Fournier’s commitment to outer space and our representations of it have fuelled him to gain unparalleled access to various leading space and research centers around the world. NASA, the European Space Agency, the Russian Space Agency and the European Southern Observatory are amongst those institutions that Fournier has spent decades negotiating access to, giving way to a unique perspective that few will ever have the chance to see apart from through the frame of his photographs.

His works can be found in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET) New York, the Centre Pompidou Paris, MAST Foundation Bologna, the Vontobel Art Collection Zürich, Baccarat Art Collection New-York, Domaine des Etangs Massignac, the LVMH contemporary Art collection Paris (with Le Bon Marché) or Fondation Bullukian Lyon among others.
He has been participating in major exhibitions such as « the Universe and Art » at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo and the Art Science Museum in Singapore or solo shows at the Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna (MAMbo) during Foto Industria 2018 or les Rencontres d’Arles in 2014.