Philippe Durand is a French artist born in 1963 in Oullins. He teaches at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Lyon. Until the 2010s, Philippe Durand worked in a post-documentary mode, where he bore witness to the customs and constraints of everyday life. Modernity then became a trace to follow in his approach.

As a flâneur and sensor of circumstance, his work incorporated the reflection of surfaces in a collage-like fashion, creating a double perspective of what surrounds us, of reality. At the turn of the 2010s, taking note of developments in the technological tools associated with photography, he evolved his practices by working with multiple exposures, then color filters, thus derealizing the initial shots, coming closer to the painter's position. It was also at this point that he began to work with large-format cyanotypes, in order to reproduce on a 1:1 scale the shadow and sunlight combinations of trees, plants and grasses.

He also develops research in photograms on paper or on non-planar supports such as marble pebbles. His work can be found in numerous public collections, including Frac Bretagne, Musée du Grand-Hornu, Centre Pompidou, Musée d'Annecy, Frac Auvergne and Centre National des Arts Plastiques. He also won a Ministry of Culture competition for his project Chauvet, l'aventure intérieure, the fruit of a psychedelic exhibition on prehistory.

We are honored to present 12 Cyanotypes in the exhibition Herbiers, Seen & Dreamed.

To find the latest news, please visit his website:
https://philippedurand.fr/