Edouard Levé

• Name — Édouard Levé • Born — 1 January 1965 • Birthplace — Neuilly-sur-Seine, France • Died — 15 October 2007 • Place of death — Paris, France • Education — ESSEC Business School • Notable Works — Autoportrait (2005) Suicide (2008)

Levé was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine on 1 January 1965. He was self-taught as an artist and studied business at the elite ESSEC Business School. He began painting in 1991. Levé made abstract paintings but abandoned the field (claiming to have burned most of his paintings) and took up color photography upon his return from an influential two-month trip to India in 1995.

• Œuvres (P.O.L, 2002). Works, trans. Jan Steyn (Dalkey Archive, 2014) • Journal (P.O.L, 2004). Newspaper, trans. Jan Steyn and Caite Dolan-Leach (Dalkey Archive, 2015) • Autoportrait (P.O.L, 2005). Autoportrait, trans. Lorin Stein (Dalkey Archive, 2012) • Suicide (P.O.L, 2008). Suicide, trans. Jan Steyn (Dalkey Archive, 2011)

Edouard Levé was recorded at birth as Édouard Denis Philippe Levé. The authorities additionally record the headings Édouard Levé and Edouard Leve. His recorded language was French.

Edouard Levé is recorded as photographer, writer and artist.

Levé's first book, Oeuvres (2002), is an imaginary list of more than 500 non-existent conceptual artworks by the author, although some of the ideas were taken up as the premises of later projects actually completed by Levé (for example the photography books Amérique and Pornographie). Levé traveled in the United States in 2002, writing Autoportrait and taking the photographs for the series Amérique, which pictures small American towns named after cities in other countries. Autoportrait consists entirely of disconnected, unparagraphed sentences of the authorial speaker's assertions and self-description, a "collection of fragments" by a "literary cubist." His final book, Suicide, although fictional, evokes the suicide of his childhood friend 20 years earlier, which he had also mentioned in "a shocking little addendum, tucked nonchalantly...into Autoportrait." He delivered the manuscript to his editor ten days before he took his own life at 42 years old.

• Angoisse (Philéas Fogg, 2002) • Reconstitutions (Philéas Fogg, 2003). Bringing together the restaged photographs of Actualités and Quotidien. • Amérique (Léo Scheer, 2006). Photographs from American towns sharing names with world cities. • Fictions (P.O.L, 2006). "Enigmatic" groups of black-clad people against a black background