The alchemists of the Middle Ages strove to find the substance from which all earthly things are made, so they believed, using salt, sulphur and mercury as the elements to be combined and converted by means of the philosophers' stone.
French photographer Didier Carré, residing in Paris – the cultural capital city of Europe - seems to have found the philosophers' stone in depicting female beauty.
Fine art photography - taking it up to the borders of aesthetics – is always a tightrope walk; Didier Carré has become a grandmaster of alchemy: his elements are light, a female nude and his camera - his philosopher's stone is the mysterious moment of creativity he keeps as his personal secret.
When I saw Carré's photographs from the Hell-Gallery at his website, I showed them to a friend in New York and his immediate reaction was: "These photos are pornographic though they are not pornographic."
Indeed. Didier Carré's work is art! Without a shadow of a doubt. He shows women exposing themselves to the countless thousands of eyes of an audience who will never get to know them in person. The women follow their own feelings, their poses, frozen in time, a moment of spontaneity. They want to be explicit: they want to be sexual - because they know what the photographer knows, and what we, the spectators, know: there is nothing wrong with sexuality. This combination of thought, of philosophy, makes a Didier Carré photograph in no way pornographic judged by our standards of what we call pornographic. On the contrary, Carré reveals truths and truth can never be pornography.
Didier Carré together with his camera - this wonderful prosthesis of our mind to eternalise on media what we see in one extremely short moment - is an archivist of female expression: the women he photographs express themselves; they insist on their beauty. The way Carré "watches" women won my respect; he demands all our respect
It is for this reason that I come to alchemy: Didier Carré's images of the female nude are a perfect example of how we can understand the female body drawing upon a wide scale of emotions: adoration, respect, even astonishment - and yes: also desire and lasciviousness.
Didier Carré's work is a great gift: he allows us to share his vision of a combination of art and Eros, his vision of the substance in fine art photography. I would be glad if you - the spectator - might agree with me: please exult over the fact that this artist exists!
Denis Oliver Ullrich
Founder of the European ARToffice®
