Since the late 1990s, Bertrand Meunier has been developing expansive photographic series that examine, in a direct yet sensitive manner, the territories in which he immerses himself over extended periods. Embracing his subjectivity, his work unfolds through a constant, productive interplay between the here and the elsewhere.
Gaining recognition for his photographs on the social transformations of contemporary China—Erased, Paysans Ordinaires—he later turned his gaze to Asian megacities with Suburbia. At the same time, he undertook a long-term project on Pakistan and Afghanistan, Je crus trouver cet autre chose, in collaboration with Newsweek magazine.
Closer to home, he documents daily life in French prisons (Le silence est un luxe) and the life of his own family (L’homme éloigné and Refuge).
A member of the collective Tendance Floue since 2007, his documentary approach is imbued with narrative undertones, elevated by the poetry of his (almost) exclusive use of black and white.
With his series on France, Je suis d’ici, he casts a critical eye on his own country, traversing it in all its diversity and favouring peripheral zones. There, he creates portraits and landscapes that, taken together, depict contemporary France—its development and the disfiguration of its territory. Created during successive residencies—from Sète to Vierzon, from Paris and its suburbs to Clermont-Ferrand, Mulhouse, Lille, and Dunkerque—Je suis d’ici stands as a manifesto for immersive exploration, meticulous fieldwork, and the long temporal scale of analog photography. Far from anecdotal, this often melancholic, poetic, and always empathetic journey through France brings the real country to life—without grandiloquence, but with precision, and in close proximity to its inhabitants. The series is currently ongoing in Plaisir, at the invitation of the city.
In parallel with this work on France, Bertrand Meunier—still attentive to contemporary Chinese realities—has continued his exploration of the Middle Kingdom. In 2018, he began a new photographic series, REC, a metaphor and allegory for the state’s constant surveillance of individuals and society as a whole.
His work on China has been published in a book by Atelier EXB, and exhibited at the Nicéphore Nièpce museum in Chalon-sur-Saône in 2023, and at the Musée de la photographie in Charleroi, Belgium, in 2024.
His photographs are held in numerous public and private collections, including the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Centre National des Arts Plastiques, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Wuhan (Chine), the Centre d’Art Contemporain, Musée de la photographie (Charleroi, Belgium), as well as the Neuflize OBC collection.
The series Erased has received several awards, including the Nicéphore Niépce Award in 2007 and the Leica Oskar-Barnack Award in 2001. He also received the International Media Award and the Joseph Kessel Award in 2005.
In 2022–2023, Bertrand Meunier was one of the laureates of the Ministry of Culture’s Grande commande: Radioscopie de la France, regards sur pays traversé par la crise sanitaire.
His first feature-length documentary was filmed inside the Poissy prison. Conversations, produced by TRIPTYQUE FILMS, had its world premiere at the Traces de vies festival in Clermont-Ferrand in December 2024, before being screened at Filmer le travail in Poitiers in February 2025.
Since January 2025, he has been working on a new film—initiated by the association Périphérie—with young minors in difficulty at the foyer Aristide Briand in the town of Gagny.
Bertrand Meunier was also awarded a creative grant in Luxembourg to work on a project in an open psychiatric centre. The resulting work will lead to a book and an exhibition in 2026.
