DIDIER GOUPY: Photographic forest scenes from Royal Deeside and Glen Affric - 13 May to 2 June 2024.

Didier Goupy is a renowned French photographer who has held exhibitions throughout Europe. These art photos were taken in the forests of Glen Affric and Royal Deeside and they capture wonderfully the multiple layers of the forest, the configuration of trees and branches which combine with the foliage below to evoke a strong sense of mystery in these ancient arboreal places.

Born in 1960, Didier Goupy made his first images in Morocco. His photographs taken in Ireland (1984) and in Egypt (1985) were published in Photo Magazine and Photo Reporter. He settled in Paris in 1986, becoming a professional photographer where he began a collaboration with the Bayard Presse group. He joined the Sygma agency in 1991. He made several trips to India between 1993 and 2001 where he realised his passion for portrait work and where he began to understand the importance of colour in his work as a photographer. The portraits of Didier Goupy are presented by the house of photographers in France called Signatures.

Today, Didier Goupy continues his personal work on space (Mythologies) with a style which bears a close relationship to painting. Influenced by the work of Mark Rothko and Pierre Bonnard he focuses on understanding the relationship between the figure and abstraction by using colour so as to create an aura of mystery and meditation. The forest (Fondations) is the inspiration for his present work and the first chapter of Mythologies.

“The forest becomes a being with multiple, changing faces. As always in his work Goupy settles into his subject, inhabits it, questions it at length in order to grasp its unity. His quest extends beyond technique. You have to take a long walk through Goupy’s images, linger and come back to them; the question of time has always been pivotal in his work. He confronts tirelessly the thoughts of philosophers, explores the difficult path of self-effacement, not letting thought come between the self and the gesture” [Marie Françoise Le Saux].