Born in Vietnam in 1945, Bernard Plossu took his first photographs at the age of 13 with a Brownie Flash during a trip to the Sahara desert with his father. In 1965, he undertook his first Mexican trip alone. Le Voyage mexicainis the result of this journey, published fifteen years after, which remains an essential publication in his work. Passionate about literature, cinema and architecture, that helped him build his vision, he is an atypical, unclassifiable photographer. For this cinephile, photographer of movement, photography is the means of attaching thought to a personal and physical knowledge of the world.

After living in California and New-Mexico, Bernard Plossu has moved to Andalusia then to France again, where he deviced a singular photographic style with a 50 mm lens, set on a 24x36 box, and has been exploring the urban world as well as wide-open spaces. 

In 1988, Bernard Plossu won the Grand Prix National de la Photographie. A number of retrospectives have been dedicated to him, particularly at the Centre Pompidou in Paris (1988), at the Museum for Photographic Arts in San Diego (1989), and at the Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderna (1997). Plossu has published many books in France, the United States, Spain, Greece, Italy, Belgium, and Portugal. He lives and works in the south of France, in La Ciotat. He is represented by Galerie Camera Obscura in Paris.