Born in 1966 in Decize (Nièvre, France).  Currently living in Paris. 

After graduating from a fine arts high school, Alain Cornu was accepted to the GOBELINS Institute of Photography (Paris). He graduated at the top of his class in 1988 and continued his training by assisting. In 1991 he became a professional photographer in his own right.

From then on, his work followed two distinct and complementary paths. First, the studio where he developed his projects focusing on still life and portrait. He completed numerous commissioned works, advertising campaigns and publications for major brands. Then, the outdoors where he worked on landscape using the large format camera. Over the past twenty-five years, he has explored France through its forests, rural areas, prehistoric heritage and coastline. Several series are dedicated to his native region, Burgundy, including Les Signes de la Forêt which received several awards and was included in the collections of the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Fonds National d’Art Contemporain. Since 2010, he has begun a multi-part documentary work on Paris. His vision initially focused on rooftops in order to study the capital from this little-known angle. Sur Paris has been the subject of several exhibitions and a book in 2016. He is also interested in the ordinary streets in his series Paris Dimanche. Between 2021 and 2025, he produced a dated state of the Paris booksellers corporation through 171 portraits. The book Bouquinistes was published in 2025. This work joined the collections of the Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris.