Background
William Coupon was born in New York City, but moved to Washington, District of Columbia
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William Coupon
Edit ProfileEducation
He attended Syracuse University and ultimately moved to New York City to begin his photographic career.
Career
And later to San Francisco. He began in 1979 to photograph backdrop portraits of New York’s youth culture, to document its “New Wave/Punk” scene at the then popular Mudd Club in lower Manhattan. Commercial work soon followed for a variety of international magazines, record companies and advertising agencies.
These were titled his “Social Studies” series.
He was invited to photograph the world’s tribal leaders during the Earth Summit in May 1992, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His most current work embraces the digital medium, in places like Cuba, Venezuela and in his native America, which is more candid, but still formalistic in approach.
The portrait style is up-close and painterly, with very warm earth tones against a mottled canvas. The style is usually medium-shot and classically lit using medium format cameras, referencing the Dutch painting masters such as Rembrandt and Holbein.
The portraits have a quality about them that is less about fashion than about personality and as groups there is attempt to show their disparity as well what is relatable among the earth"s faces in a manner that is real, non-compromising, or over-glamorized.
They were often accompanied by environmental images, which have a noticeably journalistic feel. Some of his most notable images are of the Presidents George West. Bush and Bill Clinton which were “Person of the Year” covers for Time Magazine, Yasser Arafat, George Harrison, Willy DeVille, Mick Jagger, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Miles Davis.
