What a sumptuous tour of the region’s landscapes in 208 pages and 220 photos
After having traveled our region along the paths that mark it, the journalist Monique Chevalley and the photographer Mario Del Curto describe it in this beautiful 208-page book. Neuchâtel, four strong regions including that of the Mountains on which the authors use quality images and text, sometimes personal and biting. Joining the process, the Ô questioned the author about her motivations for traveling through this corner of the country populated by just over 50,000 bipeds, to describe its landscapes, built heritage, flora, fauna and life.
– What made you decide to embark on this expedition?
– The word expedition is a great exaggeration because the Neuchâtel Mountains are part of my canton. Born on the coast, my job as a journalist led me to discover the Mountains and my second activity as a heritage and hiking guide-interpreter gave me a taste for the Jura mountains but also to realize that there remain vast forest where you can get lost… I tell it in the chapter on the Brévine valley.
– Nine living spaces, one region. How did you develop the main thread of the book?
– When the publisher offered me to write the texts, I immediately had the vision of three routes which follow the Jura folds: that of Sagne, Ponts and Brévine, that of the towns of La Chaux-de-Fonds and Le Locle and that of the Doubs gorges. And I felt the strong desire, to soak it up, to explore them on foot. For this project where I had carte blanche, I wanted to detach myself from journalistic writing to interpret this corner of the country by sharing my emotions and my experiences. Along the way, the three paths became five geographical movements, with a sixth dedicated specifically to watchmaking and a seventh to the tornado that devastated La Chaux-de-Fonds.
– This book gives pride of place to photos, how did you collaborate?
– The publisher commissioned Mario Del Curto, a photographic artist specializing in capturing life. Sharing the same slow pace of walking to soak up the region over the four seasons, our pair found each other straight away. If we walked together, Mario Del Curto also went alone to take images at daybreak, in different seasons, and rubbed shoulders with people during the many cultural and popular events that abound in the region.
– Your favorite?
– To approach the subject of watchmaking which has fertilized this land right down to the tips of the needles of its fir trees, a place appeared to me in a dream: the Pélard farm. It was there that a blacksmith made the first tower clocks in the 16th century. After several walks in the Doubs coasts, we discovered this vestige of heritage miraculously preserved and restored. A magical place, the Pélard, whose photo I had put on my wallpaper, has always brought me back to the simplicity of my origins and inspired me to tackle other essential subjects.
– A photo of the book in particular?
– One of my favorites is the one taken in the summer of 2022 in the middle of a heatwave on the Valanvron plateau of a peasant woman and her son worried about having to part with a few cows due to the lack of hay for the winter. Others like this view of the gentle hills to the south of the Locle valley with deer in the background or that of a small snail placed in the armpit of a female statue in the cemetery of La Chaux-de-Fonds… and so much others which punctuate this book, a true hymn to the Neuchâtel Mountains.
– Best reason to buy the book?
– It’s a great gift to give or to treat yourself to discover and explore the Mountain region from the warmth of your sofa without having to jump into Lake Taillières at the Cold Festival. A beautiful book to leave lying around to leaf through, delve into the photos, read in fragments, close it and open it again. A book which allows you to imbibe, to better understand the development and the human, natural, agricultural and topographical fabric of the Neuchâtel Mountains and which gives you the taste of walking there.
