Olivier Ciappa

In December 2015, the biggest French publishing company L'Harmattan published his novel "Il Était Deux Frères". Because of the novel's huge success, it quickly became out of stock everywhere.

May 2015, Olivier Ciappa creates "Les Couples Imaginaires québecois". Two years before, TV host Monique Giroux discovers the Imaginary Couples exhibition. Seeing the gigantic impact on the french society, she decides to take the exhibition to Montreal and creates new Imaginary Couples in collaboration with TV host Dany Turcotte. She made an association with the French Embassy, IBM and Desjardin bank. Together, they ask Olivier Ciappa to adapt his French exhibition with Canadian celebrities. We can see such personalities as Eva Longoria, Véronique Cloutier, Claude Legault, Lara Fabian, Dan Bigras, Etienne Boulay

Le Musée des Beaux Arts de Montréal presents in 2015 a new kind of exhibition were the old museum masterpieces would be put together to create Imaginary Couples. With headphones, the people coming to the museum would hear imaginary stories between the characters of the paintings.

In September 2015, Quebec City presents a new version of the Imaginary Couples Exhibition. All visitors heard interviews of the artist and the models while they were discovering the pictures in the exhibition. Videos were adding to the presentation with making of images .

During 2014, Olivier Ciappa created : "Fait à la main », a new exhibition ephemeral concept only for one night : black&white pictures shown at the exact location it was shot, with the models standing by in the same position. This new pictures shows naked CrossFit champions. After the success of the exhibition, Ciappa created the international worldwide calendar.

. December 2013, Olivier Ciappa goes to Montreal to take pictures of their biggest singers, actors, politicians and TV hosts. It will take the French Consul a year and a half to create the biggest exhibition ever attended in Montreal. During the shooting, celebrities started to tweet making of pictures and parts of the final work. Due to the success of their posts, it was decided that all pictures would be removed and no interview would be given until the exhibition. It was then decided that there would be two exhibitions : a public one at the Complexe Desjardins, the biggest place in Montreal. And a more elitist exhibition, at the Montreal Museum of Art. Just before the exhibition, le Huffington Post reveals that no sport champion accepted to be part of the exhibition because of sport’s homophobia The information became big in newspapers and Olivier Ciappa send a radio message to ask sports champions to change their mind. Few hours later, football champion Etienne Boulay calls Radio Canada and accepts the photoshoot. He then came to Radio Canada to explain his change of mind after viewing the peaceful images of the exhibition.

During 2012, as the debate over legalizing gay marriage in France became very polarizing to the French people, Ciappa looked for a way to bring a more positive image of gay love to a homophobic public. His concept was to show loving people – and challenge others to see this love as anything other than the love of two people. The result is an exhibition of black and white photographs, which has seen unprecedented public displays throughout the country, including at the Place de Republique and the Hotel de Ville in Paris. The photographs feature straight people posing as same sex couples, and include leading athletes, film stars and political figures. With that exhibition, Olivier Ciappa became the youngest person to be on the cover of France’s biggest newspaper Le Figaro. A sampling of the photographs are attached below.

Olivier Ciappa (born 17 March 1979 in Marseille) is a French photographer and film director. He is a director of short films, a director of musicals for the theater, illustrator of books for children, producer and director of documentaries, journalist of cinema, photographer also creator of stamps.