The metal statue of Christ on its concrete column in Guizay, a machine for wrapping papillotes from the Coulois chocolate factory in Côte Chaude, a “Coluche President” graffiti created during the 2012 presidential campaign in La Grand-Croix, geological folds in Unieux… Images from the book The Valley (Spector Books) seem banal and commonplaces. Yet each of the 138 photos taken in the Gier, Furan and Ondaine valleys (among others) tells a story, sometimes unsuspected, of the Loire landscape.
“We start with the Roman Empire and go to today”
The work, published in the fall and presented during the last Saint-Étienne Book Festival, is co-signed by Stéphanois Nicolas Giraud and Lyonnais Bertrand Stofleth, two former students of the National School of Photography. Arles, now 46 years old: “Often, outside the department, the image of the Saint-Étienne basin is rather negative,” notes the Ligerien. We wanted to give an honest representation of the region, that is to say neither catastrophic with only industrial wastelands, nor misleading by only showing the Gorges de la Loire. This territory is beautiful because of its history.”
The two authors took almost ten years to complete this photographic investigation (2013-2022). Their photos tell the history of nature as well as that of men: “We start with the Roman Empire and go to today. We said to ourselves that by looking at the landscape carefully, we could learn something about the way it was built,” explains Nicolas Giraud.
Through the images, readers are invited to a true “visual archaeology” of the territory where Gallo-Roman remains meet factories, architectural wonders and plants imported from Japan. “The book produces a kind of narration based on hydraulic power.” These are followed by themes such as industrial landscapes, automobile and popular culture, ruins, vernacular architecture…
Twelve specialist editors support the project
To support the reading of the photos, Nicolas Giraud and Bertrand Stofleth called on twelve editors specialized in these fields such as the historian and former director of the Mining Museum Philippe Peyre, the sports journalist Vincent Duluc, the archaeologist Aldo Borlenghi, the botanist Véronique Mure or even architect Jo Toda: “They explore what images cannot show. We called the project The Valley it's a very vague title but when we look at the history of the Gier valley, we can probably tell the same story in Japan, in Germany… In every country in the world, there are places like this. »
The work, which highlights both space and time, was nominated for the 2024 Rencontres d'Arles Book Prize and bronze medalist at the 2024 German Photo Book Prize: “In reality, we kept 400 clichés. We show others during exhibitions organized in parallel.”
The Valley (Spector Books), by Nicolas Giraud and Bertrand Stofleth. Price: 45 euros. The two authors will be signing at the Librairie de Paris, in Saint-Étienne) this Thursday at 6 p.m.
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