Masterclass - Jean-Louis Schoellkopf, Photography & Urban Planning

For more than fifty years, Jean-Louis Schoellkopf has viewed photography as a tool for investigation and social critique, using it to examine contemporary urban developments.

His documentary approach reveals the consequences of the end of the industrial era on these landscapes, in France and abroad—Saint-Étienne, Genoa, Rotterdam, Stuttgart, Barcelona, Paris, and the Lille-Roubaix-Tourcoing metropolitan area—taking into account their history, geography, and sociology. His exploration of the portrait, conceived on a city-wide scale, aims to highlight the connections between social conditions, lifestyles, and cultural and aesthetic models.

In this masterclass, Jean-Louis Schoellkopf places his work in the context of the history of documentary photography. He also presents several of the projects he has developed to highlight the themes that run through his body of work.