When a woman is bored, depressed or just doesn't have a lover; or at least a new lover, all she has to do is go out and buy a new frock. For men it's not so easy. Unless they happen to be a photographer.
Didier Carré went out and bought a Fuji GX 680, a huge camera that uses 120 type film with 6x8cm negatives that would allow him to create beautiful enlargements up to 50x60cm and maintain a high quality result. The Fuji GX 680 wasn't just a camera, it was a statement of intent, a weapon of war, a phallic symbol.
M Carré was a leading exponent in photographing nude statues in the park, shop window mannequins in the Paris night nakedly waiting to be dressed in the morning. He had shot girls writhing naked beneath the bed sheets, arty, sensual, but not quite nudes.
He was ready to change his life.
The GX 680 stands alone by day on its tripod like a triumphant God in the studio, an impatient beast roaring for action, guardian over Didier's future work. In those daylight hours he works in the black and white lab, mixing his chemicals like Merlin in the Court of King Arthur, earning a living, honing his skills, preparing a portfolio that in 1995 he finally shows to his first modèles, girls with sweet dispositions and names he repeats like the words of a prayer: Angèle, Jade, Caroline, Nathalie.
Yes, they say, there is nothing I would enjoy more than to slip out of these cumbersome clothes and allow your Fuji GX 680 to conquer me, capture me, preserve me for eternity like a marble statue.
It is with a sigh of relief that he lights his studio and begins with his models in a sequence of soft pictures of the sort you would expect to see in underwear ads, in swimsuit shots at the beach, from the barely clad to the long-awaited glory of female nudity.
It all happens fast now. From Angèle, Jade, Caroline and Nathalie with their white skin, in 1996 with Sophia he takes on the challenge of a black model with black and white photography. He discovers the beauty of tattoos, bondage, fetish, mixing his chemicals, shooting nudes, visiting exhibitions, becoming all that a photographer has to be. All that an artist must be.
In 1997, he began his series titled "Inventory," sequences of three photographs of each model, designing a book in his head that he would one day put between covers.
A serious photographer needs a serious place to work in and Didier Carré is serious about his craft. He rebuilt a new studio, even painted it himself, and as the new millennium rolled into view he began his obsession with mirrors, deceptive creatures, capturing reality, reflecting reality, yet subtly changing reality.
Throughout these years, all Carré's models were French: students, dancers, actresses. In 2001, he discovered the beauty of Eastern Europe and whole set of new names, Helena, Magella , Orsolya, Eva, Hanka, Veronica, new faces and a new style of photography: The Carré Style you can see today at Gallery Carré where the models so adore being photographed there is nothing they will not do to achieve the impressive results Didier Carré maintains as his leitmotiv.
Clifford Thurlow
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