Simon Couvin

Simon Couvin was born in Paris. He lives and works in Nice and his work has been the subject of several personal and collective photographic exhibitions.

Noticed in 2006 with the exhibition "Naturale Spectrum", at the Parc Botanique de Nice, Simon Couvin, like Henry Fox Talbot and Anna Atkins, takes photography to the letter of the photogram. From about thirty plant species, he produces very large black and white photograms, real photographic evidence of what nature lets appear on the sensitive surface of photographic paper. Offering to see what has been touched, what has stood out, and thus proposing to venture into the field of properties, signs that mark the territory of the plant.

Favouring the contact of the material on the photographic support, rather than the device of the shooting, he undertakes to pursue his photographic exploration through music and the representation of instruments. Experimentation made more difficult according to the material of the instrument itself, its opacity and its dimension. Photograms, material ecstasies, where everyone is filled with an immediate and nameless fullness. "These are images that we listen to where we hear our own gaze, which is already a musical form or at least sound. He then sets out to capture, from the costumes of the Ballets de Monte-Carlo, the essence of Dance that emerges in what the garment envelops, in this absence of body, like the promise of movement in infinite degrees. 

On the occasion of the collective exhibition ''Le Photogramme'' in 2010 at the Musée de la Photographie et de l'Image Charles Nègre in Nice, France, the large formats have given way to small images, more enigmatic and intimate. If technically he continues to experiment in the search for nuances of depth of black and luminous rendering according to materials and objects, it is through the introduction of hair matter that his research is no longer only photographic but becomes interior. Hair, understood as an organic matrix capable of recreating the tactile value of the senses in the visual, will gradually take on a more important place in his work, until it becomes his primary concern in terms of photographic representation.

In 2011 in Paris at the Arts Elysée fair and with the Basia Embiricos gallery, he presents two "nests under bells" entirely made from hair, cut and collected. From this mass of hair, he proposes the construction of nests, joining original forms evoking an incomplete but precious account of an immemorial humanity.

In 2012 and 2013 during "Paris Photos à la Bellevilloise", the Basia Embiricos gallery will make its picture rails available for the "Sensitive Surface" project. With the ''Série sans titre'' the artist introduces a form of abstraction into his work. Only shades of gray, black, white, come to contrast or soften our perception. The motif placed directly on the photographic paper leaves no possibility for distance to interfere in the relationship between hair and photographic matter. Nothing is then more to recognize, if not to feel. Only the representation of the matter (or thing) by itself (the trace, the print) moves us in ourselves, in our own imperfect perception (abstraction), and reveals another fragmented space, pierced more and more intimate. An encounter that puts us both in the presence of our own effacement, and of our presence to reality.

In 2016, on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the UMAM (Mediterranean Union for Modern Art) the Christian Depardieu Gallery and Simone Dibo-Choen will exhibit six "Nests of hair for strange birds" accompanied by sound creations by Nicolas Perrin. Through his artistic proposal, Simon Couvin puts in resonance men, also funny birds with strange habitats, trying to combine their dreams with those of the world around them.

In 2018 the Christian Depardieu Gallery in Nice offers the artist the opportunity to exhibit a series of photographs "Do not pull so far on my hair...". A work that proposes a more joint scrolling of bound, braided and worn hair. If he sketches a more realistic entry into the swarm of capillary trials that exalts, delights and crosses his work, he invites us to follow him in the discovery of more fascinating representations, told, mythical, enchanting faces inscribed in the very nature of the visible.