Consternation in the Sapois valley where we have just learned of the sudden death of the photographer Joel Couchouron. The artist was on vacation in Valencia where he was suddenly mowed down on Saturday September 17. It is a whole valley and a department that mourns this laughing and facetious humanist, who throughout his career has never ceased to magnify and immortalize the peasant world in its simplicity and authenticity. A being of immense benevolence who cherished the Vosges where he was born in 1951, in the small house of his parents in Sapois where he still resided, of a Vosges mother, Micheline who died last June and a Breton dad.
In 1975, he embarked on the photography of landscapes and people of the earth, which he would make his specialty in a precious ethnographic quest. Since then, this madman of images author of many works , had never stopped surveying the massif on foot or by bicycle to immortalize its people, in incredible portraits, often in black and white, and to declare his love for the Vosges. Thoughts today of his two sons, his grandchildren and his wife Blandine who find themselves orphans and heartbroken. Like the community of photographers and friends to which he belonged and in which he was active, particularly on the Sentiers de la photo, with other great photographers: Vincent Munier and Michel Laurent among others. All our condolences.