A village in the pictures
About the La Gacilly Photo Festival (56), running until 1 October 2023.
You may have heard of La Gacilly as a child if your mothers filled the bathroom with Yves Rocher products: the name of the village was written on the label. I loved the honeysuckle eau de toilette. But Yves Rocher was never just a brand. The French entrepreneur and politician who made plant-based cosmetics accessible to as many people as possible as early as the 1960s, well before the wave of organic products and a closer relationship with nature, was born on 7 April 1930 in La Gacilly, Morbihan, and died on 26 December 2009 in Paris. He left his name to a square in La Gacilly, where he was also mayor, as well as to a museum that now displays his life and work. Yves Rocher products are still sold today, of course, the industry having been taken over by Jacques Rocher, Yves' son. The Rocher group has three industrial sites in La Gacilly: the Villes Geffs factory, and the logistics platforms at Croix des Archers and Villouet. In addition to these factories, there are two other Breton sites located nearby: Ploërmel for perfumes and Rieux for creams and make-up.
However, it's not for works of art for sale that you should absolutely stop off in this picturesque Breton town before 1 October 2023. It's to wander the cobbled streets between the monumental photographs affixed to the stone walls, in the parks and undergrowth. The Festival Photo La Gacilly, which is entirely free, is celebrating its 20th anniversary in style, and it's simply enchanting! Add to that the countless artists' studios dotted along the route, and you'll have plenty of works of art to buy in this open-air art gallery!
Illustrating her article with an impressive work of photographic art by David Doubilet entitled "Barracudas encircle diver Dinah Halstead in Papua New Guinea", journalist Christine Coste chose to mention La Gacilly in her selection of the summer's not-to-be-missed photo festivals for the art magazine L'Oeil. "For its 20th anniversary, the La Gacilly Photo Festival has chosen "Nature as Heritage" as its title. It's a question at the heart of the twenty exhibitions presented here, including Sebastiao Salgado's latest opus, Amazonia. The same theme can be found in David Doubilet's underwater photographs, or Beth Moon's work on the world's largest and most impressive tree species. Brent Stirton and Maxime Riché document a biodiversity threatened by forest fires. These shocking documents include the poetic work of Evgenia Arbugaeva, who recounts life in the Russian Arctic through a visual narrative akin to storytelling.
The Place de la Ferronerie and Rue Lafayette are the setting for a series of fascinating photographs by David Doubilet entitled Voices of Water. For this artist, born in 1946 in the United States, the great unknown lies not only in the stars above our heads, but also in the abyssal depths of our planet. And, as with the galaxies, the ocean would still be a complete mystery without the magical power of photography. It is for this reason that the role of one of the pioneers of underwater photography, David Doubilet, deserves to be hailed. Fascinated by the deep sea from the age of 10, ever since reading an issue of National Geographic devoted to Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau and the Calypso, he has been one of a handful of photographers who have enabled the general public to discover a hitherto secret world, constantly plunged into darkness and where Man is only ever a very temporary guest. A mysterious world where the lens is used as a harpoon to capture magical, harmonious moments, like this iconic photo of diver Dinah Halstead in the middle of a school of barracudas in Papua New Guinea.
Born in Brazil in 1944, Sebastio Salgado also leaves us breathless as soon as we cross the threshold of the Plant Labyrinth. The Amazonia exhibition was designed by Lélia Wanick Salgado and produced in collaboration with the Studio Sebastião Salgado. For centuries, the Amazon was nicknamed "the green hell", an impenetrable, sodden jungle that offered visitors nothing but danger. Those who survived became famous through their stories. But many expeditions, especially those hoping to find gold in the mythical lost city of Eldorado, never returned. Today, the rainforest enjoys a more inoffensive, even romantic, image, that of a "green paradise", but more frequently of an extraordinary natural heritage, with one of the highest concentrations of botanical species on the planet, including 16,000 species of trees and countless plants with remarkable medicinal properties. What's more, this unrivalled density of vegetation enables it to absorb greenhouse gases and release oxygen. It also provides a traditionally safe haven for hundreds of indigenous tribes, some of whom have never had contact with the outside world.
Displaying her photographic works of art in the Jardin des Marais, American artist Beth Moon has been working on the immortality of trees, in partnership with the Branféré Wildlife and Botanical Park. For a tree to capture Beth Moon's interest, it has to meet one of three criteria: it has to be disproportionately large, old or have a remarkable history. To find candidates worthy of passing in front of her lens, this critically acclaimed photographer, who has exhibited more than 70 times around the world, devours every history book, botanical book and newspaper article she can find.
A little further on in the Jardin des Marais, the Russian photographer Evgenia Arbugaeva, born in 1985 and raised in Siberia, invites us on a journey to the end of the night with Hyperoborea. The title is inspired by Boreas, the north wind in Greek mythology, and the Hyperboreans (those who live beyond the cold winds of Boreas). It is to meet these 'hyperboreans' that we set off. This work, at the crossroads of documentary and magical realism, shows us the fragility and resilience of the Arctic land and its inhabitants. Using a visual grammar borrowed from photojournalism, but which constantly refers back to fable and myth, Evgenia Arbugaeva reveals the ineffable links between sky and earth, light and darkness, nature and culture.
Illustration : Sebastia0o Salgado - Amazônia