The idea came to Magali whilst clearing out her grandmother’s house. “There was a crucifix, it inspired me,” she recalls. And so, in 2014, the Delporte tribe strikes a pose in a makeshift confessional, clad in seventies cardigans and tartan skirts. “My mother held the camera, I didn’t have a tripod.” Titled Catholics, the image captivates through its controlled theatricality: crimson curtain, polished compositions, children with sulky expressions.
Magali Delporte, a press photographer accustomed to portraying personalities—from Emmanuel Macron to Kylian Mbappé—unleashes here a creative freedom she sometimes feels deprived of in her official commissions. In 2015, destination Wales. Inside a cramped caravan, the family nestles gypsy-style amongst artificial flowers and Peppa Pig plushies. “We found the costumes in Monmouth’s charity shops.”
In Pirates (2016), shot in Greece, the family strikes a pose on a pontoon facing the sea. “I traded their costumes with the club entertainers for a group portrait. A passer-by pressed the shutter.” With Parisians (2017), more urban in flavour, Magali had been biding her time. “I’d planned this card two years earlier, but then the attacks happened.” It’s in this photograph that Teddy Bear the stuffed toy makes his debut appearance. A gift from a smitten farmer to the little girls, he becomes the recurring thread of this saga, a mute witness to passing time.
Perched on her lemon-yellow Vespa at the Champ-de-Mars, the family plays with sixties clichés. Then comes Country folk (2018) in a Morvan family’s kitchen, where each object, bathed in soft light, lends the scene a troubling hyperrealism. This is Magali Delporte’s genius: inhabiting this interior respectfully without caricaturing it.
“We’re not there to mock, it’s a moment when we step into other people’s shoes,” she explains. The greeting card becomes a gesture of temporary belonging. Vacationers (2019) extends this exploration with a nod to historic photos of France’s first paid holidays. Broken down on a departmental road in the Gers, the family Renault 4L evokes the unpredictability of working-class holidays.
As tribute to Bowie and everyday unsung heroes, the family dons lycra bodysuits and perches on a Bagnolet rooftop in 2020. “We can be heroes, just for one year,” the caption parodies. Follow the tartan clan (2021), then the operating theatre (2022) amid Covid: “Being negative is positive!” And in 2023, an all-white setting with these words: “We’re giving you carte blanche.” Even emptiness gets thematised!
Never short of ideas, Magali literally plunges her tribe into the river below her house the following year. Soaked clothes, plastered hair. No photomontage, ever. For 2026, a site of rusted car carcasses catches her eye. Mad Max vibes! Leopard print and khaki de rigueur, faces smeared with warrior-style war paint.
Behind the whimsy, these shoots demand jeweller’s precision. Between 30 and 150 shots per session, to keep just one. “It’s staging, and that’s not my bread and butter at all,” the photographer confesses. Yet these images condense everything she cannot always express in her formatted commissions: self-mockery, playing with codes, narrative freedom.
One thinks of Cindy Sherman and Kourtney Roy for the self-staging, the humorous slant, and theatrical mise-en-scène. In each frame, Magali injects a deeply personal eccentricity. Saturated or ascetic colours, millimetre-perfect framing, improbable props. The photographic greeting card tradition itself follows in the footsteps of Elliott Erwitt, Ruth Orkin, and William Wegman.
In an age of standardised digital cards, Magali holds firm. Her cards are printed, produced, gifted. Before children, she already sent out Thai sand or flower seeds. Over the years, her daughters grow, locations shift. But one constant remains: this band of four cultivating lightness. “I can’t stay serious in a photo.” And it’s precisely this mastered nonchalance that hits the mark.
Learn more about Magali Delporte’s work: https://magalidelporte.com/
