After studies in journalism and sociology, Alain Desvergnes, ex-reporter and art critic, lived in North America for nineteen years. He worked there from 1963 to 1965, as an assistant professor at the University of Mississippi, working on Faulkner (oknapatawpha, Marval, 1989), then in 1966, at the University of Ottawa, where he created the Department of Visual Arts, and in 1975 as a professor in the department of Social Communications at the Saint Paul University. He returned to France in 1979 to become director of the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie d’Arles, where he remained until 1982 when, at the request of the French Ministry of Culture, he created the École Nationale de la Photographie at Arles. He remained in this post for sixteen years. He has exhibited in many European and American museums and galleries. His photographs are in the collections of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France; the Maison Européenne de la Photographie; the Center for Southern Studies, Mississippi; and the Canadian National Film Board.