biography

Portrait Geneviève
Geneviève Boutry lives and works in Strasbourg.

An actress and cellist for 8 years, she moved to Belgium to become a photographer. In 1986 Ms Boutry immersed herself in the world of “les dames-pipi” (the women who guarded and maintained the public toilet facilities). This became Ms Boutry’s first major photographic project, a series of portraits of these women shot in the context of their workplace, its frank realism underscored by natural lighting and the use of black and white.

Following this series Ms Boutry found herself seized by the desire for color. She also found her photography to become characterized by a more controlled staging, “mise en scene”, and a unique dreamlike, oneiric, style – a more subjective and personalized vision.

“ Roux et Rousses ”(Redheads, 1988) her next series of photographs focused on men and women visually distinguished by the colour of their hair: red. This series was envisioned as both baroque and surrealistic. Assisting, and accentuating, this vision were photographic techniques such as dramatic use of colour saturation and contrast, technically, if not stylistically, similar to those found in Ms Boutry’s other oneiric series: mother and children (1995), Ophélie (Ophelia, 1996), Rêves éveillés (Waking Dreams, 1997), Les étrangères au paradis (Strangers in Paradise, 2001)

Métamorphosis (Metamorphoses, 2003-2006) transports transports its subjects into another dimension plunging the spectator into a time, and a space, without conventional reference points. Three different periods successively follow this metamorphic itinerary. While remaining in the realm of dreams the most recent of these research / expressions rediscover the terrain of black and white photography wherein bodies dematerialize, burn, liquefy creating characters who, at the same time, become both demi-gods and demi-demon.

Geneviève Boutry has exhibited her work regularly in both France and internationally since 1995.

Awards and Grants:
-2014 Among the 8 finalists on 850 photographers-artists at the international competition of the François Schneider Foundation.
-Prize of Arts 2007, delivered by the Rhenane Academy
-Winning of CEAAC with the price of Alsace Region in 2006
-Bugatti Price at the International Festival of Poetry and Arts, 2004