André Thévenet French, b. 1914
André Thévenet (born in 1914 in Mulhouse) was a French photographer whose unique career blended architectural precision with visual experimentation. Trained as an architect at the Beaux-Arts in Paris during the 1930s, he approached photography with a deep attention to framing and composition—principles drawn from his architectural background. From the outset, he saw photography as both a spontaneous act and a visual construction.
After World War II, Thévenet settled in Vichy, where he pursued a portrait photography career from 1945 to 1948. His portraits were radical for the time: direct, unretouched, and uncompromising. In Vichy, he met painter and photographer Jacques Fouquet, whose critical eye pushed Thévenet to further refine and purify his approach.
By the 1950s, Thévenet had begun exploring more formal and abstract photographic techniques, including photograms and graphic compositions. In PhotoMonde (1955), he published a portrait of Man Ray alongside works inspired by Otto Steinert’s fotoform movement. In 1956, he received the gold medal for nude and portrait photography at the Mostra Internazionale di Fotografia in Venice, organized by the "La Gondola" circle.
In 1951, he opened a modest studio in Paris and turned to advertising photography. By the early 1960s, he specialized in luxury object photography for brands such as Van Cleef & Arpels and contributed to Votre Beauté magazine. He also authored a manual titled Photographique simplifié, designed to offer clear and structured guidance on portrait photography, divided into three main sections: camera and lighting equipment, portrait technique and psychology, and different types of portraiture.
Thévenet firmly positioned himself as an outsider to traditional definitions: “I am not a painter, I am not a photographer. I am a man of the graphic arts.” His work, straddling reportage, personal photography, and commercial image-making, reflects a lifelong commitment to a practice that is rigorous, experimental, and deeply individual.
