Jean-François Bouchard has developed a lens-based visual art practice engaging with individuals and communities beyond dominant social frameworks. Situated between documentary practice and a conceptually driven, subjective inquiry, the practice approaches marginal and subcultural worlds as social systems that generate their own forms of meaning and belonging, informed by the conviction that engaging with alternate viewpoints and unfamiliar contexts can reshape how social reality is perceived and understood.
Working across photography, film, sculpture, and installation, photography often serves as a point of departure, extending into spatial and material forms that invite viewers into liminal environments shaped by proximity, encounter, and lived experience.
Exhibitions have been presented in Canada, the United States, France, Korea, Mexico, and Cuba, including at Arsenal Contemporary Art in New York, Montreal, and Toronto. A monograph was published by The Magenta Foundation. In Guns We Trust was selected by Artnet as a “Must-See Show in NYC,” and Exile from Babylon was named an “Editor’s Pick” by Artforum in early 2023.
Projects have been featured in The Washington Post, Stern Magazine, Wired, The Guardian, and The British Journal of Photography, among others, and Bouchard was nominated for the Nannen Prize in Germany.
The recent project The New Cubans was launched at Perrotin Store New York and published by PowerHouse Books (co-published in French by Éditions André Frère). It was exhibited at Blouin Division in Canada, during Paris Photo at Fisheye Gallery, and in Korea, Cuba, and Mexico.
Bouchard lives in New York City and Montréal.
