Didier Carré had finally plucked up the courage to ask a girl to take her clothes off so that he could photograph her naked. He had shown her his fine photos of naked statues and naked shop window mannequins. Now he was ready for warm flesh, subtle skin tones, all the complex symmetry of woman. He was ready. She was ready.
That's when his call up papers arrived on the door mat and his first nude would have to wait. He sealed his Minolta XD7 in its leather case and put it away with the 28mm, 50mm and the 80/200 zoom lenses and left them in a drawer like some precious relic, or a lucky charm that would keep him safe when he went away to war.
Well, not war, exactly. It was 1983. France was as peaceful as it had ever been in the last 500 years and his military service passed without injury, incident, even memory. It was long period away from photography but the artist takes every experience in life and that, he would come to see, informs the work; it gives it the depth and range of feeling that callow youth must come to learn.
In 1984, eighteen months after he set out for military training, he polished his boots for the last time, brushed his jacket and set his cap at a jaunty angle. It was over. Didier was ready for life: or ready to start earning a living. He began his first job as the assistant to Jacques Moatti, the photographer at the Opéra de Paris, and although he didn't realise his dream to capture the female nude, he did acquire a wealth of experience shooting performers in the opéra, the ballet and the dance school – fine, slender girls with shapely figures and long limbs. How would they look without their tutus? Naked except for a pair of ballet shoes. If only he had a studio, he was sure they would have taken off their little scrap of clothing to be immortalised on film.
Such plans were going through his mind when tragedy struck. Not Didier. But his boss. In 1991 the official opéra lensman had a motorbike accident and remained in hospital for more than twelve months. The system of photographing shows was reorganized and, after seven happy years working with Jacques Moatti, Didier found himself out of work.
Working as an assistant at the Opéra wasn't exactly gold rush time and Didier had to find a way to make a living as quickly as possible. He set up a studio specialising in black and white photography and took on work with the fashion photographers at Vogue, Elle, Marie Claire, Vogue Uomo in Italy, Vogue Bambini in Italy, and many others magazines.
He was, in every respect, in vogue, the laboratory assistant de jour. He mixed his own chemicals to a secret formula and became so well-known as a technician he was busier than he had ever been during the opéra phase in his search for the perfect nude.
It was as if his life was becoming Greek myth. It had been twelve long years of work and he had few pictures of the sort he saw in his dreams: exquisite beautiful women proud of their nakedness and captured like works of art by the Carré camera. He did have what he calls his "Tribute to Francis Giacobetti," with a girl under sheets, an idea not stolen, but used in homage to a revered master.
Nudes under sheets. Not quite nudes. Didier Carré would have to wait just a little while longer.
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