Bertrand Meniel

<P>Photorealism, and it¿s twenty-first-century advancement, Hyperrealism, comprise a genre of painting that developed in the United States and Europe using high-resolution photograph as its primary source material. Embracing digital photography perhaps more than any other artist working in this genre, French-born Bertrand Meniel (1961¿) is able to incorporate an astonishing amount of detail into his renderings of cityscapes in New York City, Miami, and Paris.</P><P>Primarily self-taught and with no preliminary experimental, developmental, or student work, by 1996 Meniel was creating works with powerful, distinctive, and very original imagery, having mastered techniques and skills that normally require a lifetime. Using a variety of photographs of his chosen subject, he manipulates an image to perfection, focusing simultaneously on the foreground and background by combing hundreds of shots on a computer screen.</P><P>His choice to depict iconic American scenes in his paintings, particul