There are times when the English language fails so utterly only words in French will do. Here is a prime example: Hymne à la Femme. The phrase is a homage, a feast: religious and yet tinged with the vague excitement of being sacrilegious.
Hymne à la Femme was the title of a Didier Perreau exposition in 2004 and he clearly liked the phrase so much his new show earlier this year was a variation on the theme: Hymne à la Féminité.
There was a few years back an exhibition called En Hommage à la Féminité and that's exactly what Perreau brings to his work: it is a veneration, a prayer, a song of praise. He worships women. He places them on an altar and his photographs are a demand that we, too, hold our palms to our chest and chant a brief mantra: a hymn to the female of the species.
Didier Perreau was born close to Paris in 1953 and there was never a moment's doubt that he would become a photographer. Developing liquids run through... MORE
Images from "Hymne à la Femme"
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