J. S. Cartier was born in Paris of French parents and his maternal grandfather was killed in 1915 while serving in the French Army. In 1951, aged 19, he left for the United States where he was promptly drafted in the U.S. Army. Afterwards, he went to Oxford where he studied at the Ruskin School of Art on a GI Bill grant. Returning to New York, he became a painter, progressing from Abstract Expressionism to Minimalism. In order to paint, Cartier held several part-time survival jobs such as gas station attendant, housepainter, carpet layer, interpreter, movie theater usher, road mender, messenger boy, department store salesman, postal employee, encyclopedia editor.... From 1970 on, Cartier exhibited the work of younger French photographers at the French Cultural services in New York and then turned from painting to photography. After an invitation to Ansel Adams' workshop, Cartier chose to use the 4x5 view camera and began to carry out several projects including one on the natural landscapes of New York and another on its chaotic aspects. In 1984, he first photographed Verdun's battlefields. Then, working as a team with his wife Anna, he began in 1990 the large scale project which was to record the vanishing vestiges of the Great War in France and in Belgium. J. S. Cartier's photographs have been seen in publications such as Le Monde, Zoom, Liberation, L'Express, Life, The New York Times, The London Times, Art in America, American Photographer, etc. His work has often been exhibited and is represented in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Bibliotheque Nationale and other public and private collections.