beaux livres : photo, architecture, art

PAR LES FORÊTS, LES VILLES ET LES VILLAGES, LE LONG DES VOIES ET DES CHEMINS…

Thierry Girard / Héloïse Conesa

This book brings together several photographic series from different periods, but whose common denominator is the itinerary. Indeed, according to Thierry Girard, the photographic construction of a territory is often built around a journey that can be represented by a line from one point to another, whether imaginary or real, such as the subway lines in Japan with “Yamanote” and “Tenjin,” which the photographer follows from station to station. This line can also be historical, as when Thierry Girard retraces, geographically speaking, the conquering advance of General Leclerc's 2nd Armored Division, allowing him to cross the landscape of eastern France to Strasbourg, the point of arrival and liberation of the city. For his latest work, the photographer travels along several possible routes to reach the Lion of Belfort, crossing rural and urban landscapes and meeting

characters along the way. The bringing together of four major photographic series in a single book is akin to a manifesto.

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CORRESPONDANCES AUTOUR DE BATAILLE

Anne-Lise Broyer / Olivier Meunier / Thierry Girard / Michel Surya / Vincent Roget

A look back at a film by André S. Labarthe that left its mark on the “Un siècle d'écrivains” (A Century of Writers) collection: Georges Bataille, à perte de vue (Georges Bataille, As Far as the Eye Can See), made in 1997.

The book includes an interview with André S. Labarthe and Olivier Meunier in 2014 and correspondence between the director and Michel Surya during the preparation of the film. The book also includes extensive iconography from the film and previously unpublished photos by photographer Anne-Lise Broyer. A preface by Mathilde Girard and an afterword by Vincent Roget accompany a previously unpublished letter by André S. Labarthe.

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Journal de l’œil (les globes oculaires)

Anne-Lise Broyer / Léa Bismuth / Thierry Girard / Bertrand Schmitt / Yannick Haenel / Muriel Pic

With Journal de l’œil (Les Globes oculaires), Anne-Lise Broyer attempts to experience literature through the gaze. As if, through photography, she were advancing in her vision as one advances in a book... The work is built around the life and work of Georges Bataille... Each image is a journey that implicitly refers to the writer, but goes beyond a simple desire to document. Anne-Lise Broyer's approach is also sensitive, emotional, and intuitive. She captures the power of Bataille's writing, the challenge being not to create images that illustrate a thought, but rather to find images that are conducive to producing thought. The book also includes unpublished texts, essays, and more free-form approaches by Léa Bismuth, Bertrand Schmitt, Mathilde Girard, Yannick Haenel, and Muriel Pic.

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Paysage temps

Thierry Girard / Raphaële  Bertho / Danièle Méaux / André Micoud

Paysage temps is the culmination of 20 years of photographic observation of the landscape in the Northern Vosges Regional Nature Park. The book presents both sides of the observatory's approach. On the one hand, there is the artistic dimension of Thierry Girard's work, presented through a portfolio of unique images that invite readers to discover this emblematic rural region. On the other hand, there is a collective reflection on the current and future challenges facing the observatory as a tool for understanding, analyzing, and forecasting in order to better control the evolution of our landscapes, which is inextricably linked to the evolution of our lifestyles.

The texts by Raphaële Bertho, Danièle Méaux, and André Micoud offer different approaches and fields of analysis of Thierry Girard's work and the challenges facing the observatory.

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Dans l’épaisseur du paysage

Thierry Girard / Yannick Le Marec

This book recounts, in the lighthearted style of correspondence, a fascinating exchange between a historian and a photographer about a challenging photographic work that constantly questions the issue of landscape.

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Salle des fêtes

Thierry Girard

Thierry Girard, invited by the Museum of Hunting and Nature to undertake an artist residency at the Belval estate in the Ardennes, went there with the idea of ​​paying homage to the spirit of Walden by the American writer Henry David Thoreau.

He hoped for snow, cold, and asceticism, but found only torrential rain and storms lashing what turned out to be a battlefield, the site of three successive wars, and particularly, where he found himself, the site of the defeat of 1870. Salle des fêtes (Festival Hall) is carried by both a text by Thierry Girard, with its poetic rhythm, and the photographic account of a winter exploration of this territory of defeat.

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Paysages insoumis

Thierry Girard / Pierre Bergounioux

What does a landscape reveal? What secrets does it hold behind its apparent tranquility? While working on a project around Vassivière in the Limousin region, Thierry Girard was struck by the rebellious and defiant nature of the history and culture of this area. Drawing on this reflection, he attempts to capture, through his large-format photographs, the rich historical dimension of this region and its neighboring departments.

To evoke the land of the Resistance, but also all the forms of resistance that, over the centuries, have shaped the history of these regions: collective or individual revolts, peasant uprisings and social conflicts, but also the paths of exile or migration of populations driven by necessity.

His work has developed around places (cities, villages, countryside, forests) where a remarkable or more modest event has left its mark. The landscape often seems indifferent, often silent in relation to its history, but his skill lay in making this weight of the past rise to the surface of the image. Through research, sometimes gathering testimonies from local inhabitants, he presents, alongside each photograph, a short text recounting the historical event that took place there.

The writer Pierre Bergounioux, so attached to this land in the Centre of France, has written a substantial, unpublished text, recounting a short history of insubordination through the ages: from the Sumerian era to Tarnac in 2008! We find the strength of his literary style which here carries all his commitment.

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Un hiver d’Oise

Thierry Girard

In Un hiver d’oise, Thierry Girard abandoned his usual approach of documenting a journey, and instead chose to construct three sets of images inspired by landscapes and elements characteristic of the Oise department. He brought together his current working questions with literary references also linked to this territory.

Thus, the first part, entitled Toise, reveals an attraction to the vast, uniform expanse of the Picardy plateau, which Thierry Girard has treated like his maritime and Atlantic landscapes.

The second series, Noise, is primarily linked to the work of Nerval, the poet of Valois, but also evokes Balzac's La Belle Noiseuse, and therefore the question of representation. Hence the idea of ​​exploring the ambiguity of the representation of the body in painting or religious sculpture and suggesting, through a few portraits of young girls and atmospheres of wood or nature, a pictorial and literary universe of a somewhat somber and melancholic romanticism… Nervalian, in a way.

The third section, Poise, presents urban landscapes photographed with a 4x5 camera. Focusing not on monuments, grand houses, or picturesque farms, but on places of brick and gray that evoke the industrial and working-class history of the Oise region and an era symbolized by the work of Henri Barbusse, another writer from the Oise.

These three series, of course, do not encompass the entirety of the Oise, but offer three entry points, three possible approaches, both accurate and highly subjective.

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