Georges Rousse

French artist and photographer Georges Rousse is internationally renowned for his ephemeral, one-of-a-kind installations and resulting photographs. Rousse may draw, paint, and/or build constructions that enable him to realize his vision for the space. This may involve one or more primary shapes, painted letters, chalk, newspapers, wooden lattices, and more. 

Working at the intersections of photography, painting and architecture, Rousse transforms abandoned or soon-to-be-demolished buildings into surprising visions of color and shape through the single-perspective of his camera lens. Using space as his raw material, Rousse translates his intuitive, instinctual readings of space into masterful images of several “realities”: that of the actual space, abandoned or soon-to-be demolished; the artist’s imagined mise-en-scène; and the final photograph, or the reality flattened.

The work of Georges Rousse (b.1947) has been shown in numerous biennials (Paris, Venice, Sydney) and has been exhibited in the Grand Palais (Paris), Hirshhorn Museum (Washington, D.C.), Haggerty Museum (WI), House of Culture (La Paz, Honduras), Sivori Museum (Buenos Aires), and National Art Museum of China, among hundreds of others. It can also be found in the collections of the Louvre Museum (Paris), Brooklyn Museum (NY), National Museum of Modern Art (Paris), Museum of Modern Art (Vienna), La Salle Bank Photography Collection (Chicago), Guggenheim Museum (NY), and Deutsche Bank Collection, among several others. As of 2016, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles (CA) also added his work to its collection.

Georges Rousse has received such prestigious awards as the International Center of Photography Award in 1988 and the National Grand Prix of Photography in 1993.