Paul Edwards is Associate Researcher at the Maison Française d’Oxford, and Associate Professor in English at Paris Diderot.
Paul specializes in the relations between photography and literature. Not only texts engaged with the photographic imaginary, but also printed matter containing photographs. He has published two monographs : Soleil noir. Photographie et littérature des origines au surréalisme(Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2008), and Perle noire. Le photobook littéraire (PUR, 2016), as well as an anthology, Je hais les photographes ! textes clés d’une polémique de l’image 1850-1916 (Anabet, 2006), and articles in English, such as “Translating The Water-Babies into French and Photography”, Word and Image, Vol. 30, No. 3 (July-September 2014) pp. 273‑286; “Musing with the Muse in the Photographically Illustrated Marble Faun”, Word and Image, Vol. 30, No. 1 (May 2014), pp. 64‑75; “Brassaï” and “Henri Cartier-Bresson”, Fifty Key Writers on Photography, Mark Durden (ed.), Routledge, London, 2013, pp. 56‑61 and 66‑71; “I Hate Photographers: The Photographer as Villain”, Words and Photographs. Literature and Photography, Ferdinando Scianna and Antonio Ansón (eds), Ministerio de Cultura, Milan, 2009, pp. 198‑229. He co-founded www.phlit.org, a site dedicated to works of photoliterature. In addition, he has produced creative work for the Ouphopo (Workshop for Potential Photography).
He is also a literary translator and has published widely on Alfred Jarry and his period. He edited and translated Jarry for the Complete Works (Atlas Press), and was one of the editors of the Œuvres complètes (Classiques Garnier).