Born in 1970 in Paris, Olivier Culmann is a photographer since 1992 and a member of the Tendance Floue collective since 1996. Set at the frontier of absurd and derisory his art stands as a permanent
interrogation of our lives. Free will and social conditioning are core questions in Olivier Culmann’s work. During the 1990’s, for his book Les Mondes de l’école, he visited several countries to research traces of insubordinations and submissions palpable in the educational institutions. In the wake of September 11th events, he decides to focus on the witnesses of an aftermath with the selection « Autour, New York 2001-2002 ». The faces of the spectators around Ground Zero, were they – American or simple tourists visiting the ruined site – are like mirrors of our own bewilderment. He then began the « Watching TV» series (2011); a collection of TV viewers met in various places in the world, reaching a new dimension in terms of the reflexivity of his work as a photographer. A crude investigation on the state of bodies and souls drowned in echoes of a world that’s filtered by the screen. This serie have been exhibited in the Rencontres d'Arles in 2006, recieved the 3rd price of World Press Photo in 2008, and have been published by the éditions Textuel in 2011. 

A part of the serie The Others have been presented in the Festival Images in Vevey, Switzerland. With more than 130 pictures, it is exhibited for the first time in its entirety in the musée Nicéphore Niépce and in the eponym book.