Portrait
Philippe-Gérard Dupuy took his first pictures when he was about 10 years old. At the time, his favorite camera was the "Brownie Starlet", ideal for meticulous family pictures.
He subscribed to the "Human Sculpture" club, a bodybuilding training course by mail, managed by the wrestler Robert Duranton and captured praiseworthy pictures of his own advantageous poses in the wardrobe of his parents.
When he was 13, he tried to shoot with a "Zorki" a portrait lit solely with a match, but as he used a flash, the result exceeded his expectations.
His perfectionism did not go unnoticed (at the age of 14, he installed a wooden handle on his high school photo club camera) nor did his research skills (adaptation test of a peephole on his lens).
Philippe-Gérard Dupuy joins a photo club by mail where he was taught the art of photographing donkeys in meadows. It did not take him long to co-found the "New Expression" club, whose activities typically consisted of spending the weekend in Barcelona because one of the founders had a driving license and a car.
For a long time, at weekends, he worked as a ghost-photographer for the professional wedding photographers of Toulouse. During the week, Dupuy cleaned supermarkets photo booths and as a maintenance test, he took an important series of grimaces, lost since then.
Fashion entertained him for a while. Then he spent some time in the advertising industry before taking some distance from these worlds. Dupuys completely stopped to illustrate other realities when he turned 21 years old. What followed is well known: Arles, exhibitions, photography teacher since 1970, creation of the photo-gallery "Voir" in 1977 with René Valère.