Biography

Alain Volut was involved in the theatrical research circles in France, Poland, and Italy during the 1970s and 1980s, and participated in several film projects. He directed two documentary short films: Forum Vulcani, about Naples, and Paris XXe, about the children of the twentieth arrondissement of Paris, while also working as a photographer for various theater companies in Italy.

In 1990, he settled in Naples and devoted himself to photographic reporting, collaborating with major Italian and French newspapers and magazines as well as with the VU agency in 1992 and 1993.

In Naples, he documented the 4 interventions of the French artist Ernest Pignon-Ernest and in 1996 published a book on it, presented by Christian Caujolle, Vicoli della memoria / Les ruelles de la mémoire (2nd edition). In 1999, he published Créature, a report on childhood in European cities. In 2000, he published Ombre, a work on Pompeii casts, including one of his sculptures, with an introduction by Bernard Noël.

He carried out a photographic investigation, Nel labirinto del tempo, on the Province of Naples, published in 2001, followed by a report on the procession of Procida. His work on the Naples metro, Under the ground, created in color and black and white, also includes an installation. Terre natale / L’homme premier, his photographic work on the Dogon, prefaced by Catherine Clément, was presented at the Conciergerie de Paris in 2007 and at the Abbaye de Beaulieu in Rouergue in 2014, accompanied by two large installations.

Exploring the relationship between photography and installations, he approaches another dimension of the image, between hologram and dream anthropology. One of his installations, presented at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris in 2010 during the exhibition “Autour de l’extrême,” is part of the MEP collection. His latest black and white photographic report, Au seuil du Monde, is on Varanasi in India. His latest installation, Le rêve du corps / L’homme livre, presented in Namur and at the Tre A gallery in Belgium, includes photographs and a human body entirely made up of books. He has recently completed a photographic project in four Parisian museums: the Louvre, the Pompidou Center, the Quai Branly, and the Guimet Museum. In 2015, he presented La demeure infinie, a weaving of all his works occupying all the spaces of the author’s house.

After images about Yoga, he is currently working on a photographic project on prehistory. He lives and works in Dordogne.