"The places I photograph are handmade; they are not virtual. It is important for me that these fictions, although artificial, are real. Even if it is an illusion, photography exalts these 'lived moments.'”
Didier Massard is a magician of invention within the genre of fabricated photographs. For twenty-five years he executed commercial work as a still photographer for clients in the world of fashion and cosmetics, photographing for labels including Chanel, Hermes, and many others. He launched his artistic career with the completion of his series Imaginary Journeys, a project that took him over ten years to complete. Now working exclusively on personal projects, he conceives of his works from the recesses of his imagination while drawing from our collective romantic and touristic notions of nationality and place. He has created many exotic locales within his studio, evoking the lands of Ireland, China, India, Holland, and the cliffs of Normandy. Massard works for long periods on each of these tableaux, and ruminates that "each image is the completion of an inner imaginary journey." Roberta Smith wrote in The New York Times that in Massard's work "color and space combine with fastidious detail to create a sense of illusion and artifice that is more usual to painting, Magic Realist painting in particular...one's willingness to suspend disbelief is a measure of Massard's skill."
"They are marvelous places that first exist in my imagination, then in the studio in front of my camera. They are also theatrical sets where everyone may represent one’s own play, with one’s own characters."
Didier Massard was born and raised in Paris where he received his Baccalaureate degree in art and archaeology from the University of Paris in 1975.
Massard works slowly, completing only two or three images a year. Following his first series, he created Artificial Paradise between 1999 and 2003, and since then, he has been involved in the evolution of Territories which includes images of animals and mysterious landscapes. His second monograph entitled Artifices was published in 2007.
SELECTED COLLECTIONS:
AXA, New York
Bloomingdales, New York
The Buhl Foundation, New York
Capital Group Companies, Los Angeles, California
Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Ohio
Citibank, New York
Davis, Polk and Wardwell, New York
Deutsche Bank, New York
Fond National d'Art Contemporain, Paris, France
Musee d'Elysee, Lausanne, Switzerland
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas
