By
Laura Bayoumy
Published on
June 16, 2024 at 8:30 a.m.
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“Taste these peas, they’re real candy!” », exclaims Pascal Plessis, the Roches Noires market gardener, during the inauguration of the “ecological estate”, Thursday May 23, in Villervillenext to Deauville (Calvados).
In front of a host of guests from the surrounding area, this entertainer presents the fruit of his work like a true showman.
With a certain patter, the market gardener shares his tips and anecdotes. He approaches his failures not without facetiousness. The solutions are delivered, under the watchful eye of his mentor, Didier Delaporte, also a market gardener, at the château farm in Villerville.
He says he has “pressure”, yet he captures the attention of an audience committed to his cause. An audience that happily lets itself be taken along the aisles, picking at a strawberry here, admiring the yellow zucchini flowers or the purple artichoke flowers there…
Cuttings for Prince Harry
He admits, he is “very happy to see people” for once that he is not alone, for hours, in this one-hectare patch of greenery. “With the view of the sea” from his field, Pascal Plessis would not trade his life for anything in the world. However, it marks a real break with a not-so-distant past. It’s Didier Delaporte who spills the beans.
You know, before, he photographed stars!
A few minutes later, the one who no longer swears by market gardening in living soil shares revelations, each more surprising than the last.
Enough talk about cuttings, here we are talking about the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle or the polo cut from jeweler Cartier. Events that he photographed like so many others…
However, of these photos taken in black and white – for the French touch – nothing filters through. Under the eye of his lens, the biggest stars of cinema, fashion, music and political figures paraded… Between private parties, in nightclubs, almost every weekend, birthdays, weddings, Pascal Plessis had plenty to make the headlines of the tabloid press.
Talkative about his new passion for market gardening, he reveals nothing about the celebrities he has met. A man of confidence remains so, even when his career is behind him.
Behind, really? “There are mornings when he comes earlier to work in the greenhouse before leaving for England,” says, amused, Juliette Laniray, his boss, at Roches Noirs.
From film to digital
Because small contracts always bring him back across the Channel. No details then, but a pressbook attests to his photos: the models Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss appear on the first page. Young, slender, laughing out loud. Their friendship is not oversold. A few pages later, we attend a private concert by Stevie Wonder, or even Elton John.
Its specialty of black and white without flash marks its past, while in the years 1990 to 2000, everyone swears by “color with flash”. So that his photographs are not “dirty” by the environment, he accessorizes the places with warm and natural lights.
His know-how and interpersonal skills pay off. The contracts followed one another and, with his success, Pascal Plessis carved out a place of choice in this sector. A first company is created, then a second and a third.
One thing led to another, I invested in a laboratory, a photo studio, then we grew to 26 employees!
He takes all turns, even digital, he who loves film so much. “It didn’t happen without pain. »
Editing a magazine
Rather than lament, he pulls off a new master trick. The photos of private events that the stars request are printed and laid out the next day, and delivered to your home in the form of a magazine. He believes in the power of beautiful objects and paper.
Even though the photos were taken in the evening, my client found his magazine at home the next day.
The machinery was well-oiled: a photographer, an SD card deliveryman, the printer worked on the line.
His “lucky star” is watching and he goes through all these transitions, even those of social networks, or Brexit.
Sequins and rhinestones at the key of the fields
But with the arrival of Covid-19, the party is over. The photographer accustomed to “running everywhere, bag on his back, working 16-hour days” suffered a violent halt to his activity.
No more champagne glasses, no more glitter, no more rhinestones and sequins. Pascal Plessis finds his salvation far from pomp and luxury.
In my laboratory, while I took my photos, I watched videos of market gardening and gardening.
Training later, then his return to France, after having lived for thirty years in England, the man is delighted to have only stayed “three days without work”. First, it is Merville-Franceville who receives his new skills as a market gardener… He finds satisfaction in “doing his part of the hummingbird”, by feeding the children in the school canteen, he who has already “benefited so much from the life “.
Stories to tell
The man whose career in the photo press took off in 1993, at the London News, “never looks back” and prides himself on having respected a certain ethic.
He also tracks the emotion on the faces of personalities, is on the lookout for the slightest “story to tell” in his photos, but has refused to give in to the siren calls of the tabloids.
His eyes sting when he recalls the death of Princess Lady Diana in 1997, under the Pont de l’Alma in Paris.
At the time, I had already made my choice. While the paparazzi were standing around outside, I was inside, with the stars.
Pascal Plessis has chosen his side. Since his return to France, he has tried to make his way in this very closed circle, but the doors seem to open more easily in terms of his new activity. He notably films interviews for the channel Earthworm production…
Photography, a family heritage
It must be said that Pascal Plessis has someone to take after. His great-grandfather was none other than Alcide Goupil. A photographer and journalist with local notoriety since he founded the newspaper Le Lexovien.
He also died at the age of 83, in his offices after having supervised its last layout. At the time, he immortalized the fruit of his work on glass plates, “used, before the war, as negatives”.
Her daughter, Raymonde, in photo printing, had also carefully preserved them. After the bombings, everything was scanned in the Calvados departmental archives… “As a kid, when I went to her house, I spent my life playing with the cameras,” remembers this fifty-year-old from Lisieux, with a tanned complexion from the days in the open air.
But what got him started in photography was in fact the France 3 cameras that came for a news item that happened near his home.
The “breaking news” piqued the young boy who then turned to electro-technical studies at the Paul-Cornu high school, in Lisieux, with the intention of becoming a cameraman.
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