Raymond and Marcel Privat, the two breeder brothers from the hamlet of Villaret, 1000 meters above sea level facing Mont Lozère, are no longer of this world. But the two bachelors, octogenarians in the 1990s, became immortal thanks to the 6-9 camera and Raymond Depardon’s camera for the documentary film La vie moderne (2008). The two “old guys” still perfectly embody today, in Milan as in Shanghai, the invisible France, that of the middle mountains, deprived, out of time and out of fashion.
“It’s the France of Morvan, Haute, Loire, Aude, Ariège. It took me a long time to discover this France that no one wanted to hear about on television and in the newspapers. With the “Rural” exhibition, the Lumière d’Encre gallery in Céret (Pyrénées-Orientales) had the good inspiration to choose the work of the famous photographer for the inauguration of its new place, the “Capelleta”, a former chapel of Céret, and the opening of the first Landscape Photographic Meetings which take place over two months.
” The exhibition Rural de Céret is the most successful of all. Over time, of course, I was able to take a step back, redo a selection. These photos are made to be seen by the very people who live in these landscapes. It makes no sense for them to take the TGV to see photos of landscapes that are close to their homes, ”explains Raymond Depardon, unalterable passion and emotion intact when he talks about the unique experience he had. for years in the very heart of the landscapes and among the weathered faces of immortal France.
“They were already in decline. Raymond and Marcel explained to me that if we continued like this, we would end up in the wall. It was at the beginning of the 1990s”, exclaims Raymond Depardon who regularly returns to Villaret to “take news” of those who, clinging to the mountains, perpetuate the landscapes and are the very foundation of this exhibition in Céret in 21 pictures.
“It took time to be accepted among them. It takes years for those in the village of Villaret to give themselves up, for them to accept, without playing and without machine-gunning them,” continues Raymond Depardon, who himself grew up on the Garet farm in the Lyonnais mountains, before become an exceptional photographer and documentary filmmaker.
“There is an intense humanity in these photos, a truth even if the relationship to the rural world has evolved. Raymond Depardon looks at landscapes through his past. And it’s fascinating”, enthuses Claude Bélim, the president of “Lumière d’encre”. Ironically in the history of men, the old chapel which receives them today until the end of the month, housed for years the Archaeological research center of Françoise Claustre, the prisoner of the desert, hostage of the Chadian rebels, through which the young photographer Raymond Depardon appeared in full light as a great reporter at the time of his release.
“Rural”, exhibition by Raymond Depardon. Until May 28. Capelleta, rue Pierre Rameil in Céret (Pyrénées-Orientales), from Tuesday to Saturday. First meetings of landscape photography until the end of June.