Like many true passionate persons, Philip Conrad has started photography at an early stage. Inspired by the 80’s US graphic novels, whom Frank Miller was one of the most famous leaders, he first of all draws his universe to make it live.
But soon, he tries to capture the lights and the shades of his early years with an old Yashica of the first generation. So he logically begins by still life, then architecture, macro and eventually some abstract images.
A few years later, he meets a young photographer girl from the Fine Arts School. This encounter will enrich and boost his mileage. Enrich because he will learn the techniques of the dark room…and boost because with her he will settle his first trips around the world, where he will draw profit from other sources of inspiration.
The funny thing is that this very artist girl will become his first model. At that period, he realizes his first works about the body and the light (see the section “Sun Bathing”), and it will become obvious that glamorous photography will also be a part of his universe.
Years go along, a very different career is profiling, but photography remains a true passion that will never fade away. Techniques are refining, artistic choices also. Faithful to Nikon both in digital (D70S then D-300) and classical (F-601) way, he continues to dig in his own style (rather graphic images, non-structured settings with strong contrasts, all this mainly in a black and white approach). Very admiring of Raymond Depardon’s works in which he finds again the purified vision of Franck Miller, he will also take inspiration of Jacques Henri Lartigue, Robert Frank, Edouard Boubat, Anton Corbijn or Michael Kenna. With a particular affection for the approach of René Maltête
Today, his fantasy remains the same since his adolescence; to have a camera instead of his eyes that could go off by a single blink. Only to catch the magic and ephemeral instant that gives all its meaning to the art of photography. No doubt it’s for this reason he avoids the shootings in studio, he doesn’t own a lot of very sophisticated equipments, and he tries to bypass the highly touristic places, where he will discretely prefer to shoot the tourists themselves rather than the places.
Only equipped by a single camera and 3 lenses, he constantly tries to discover beauty at every moment and interest where nobody can suspect it to be…
Convinced that the look is like the rest; it can improve.
And when we take the time to look around us with envy and curiosity, interest and beauty are everywhere.
