These 2 beautiful, award-winning Books that take us across the Atlantic and the Pacific

Discover the Basque Country through autochromes

Let's start with the Atlantic coast. Winner of Nouvelle-Aquitaine, the publisher Kilika supported the Basque museums of Bayonne and Bilbao, on the Spanish side, in their rediscovery of autochromes dating from the beginning of the 20th century. These first color photographs of the Basque Country, fixed on glass plates using a process invented by the Lumière brothers, were lying dormant in their reserves. Bayonne has already exhibited prints in the original pastel shades, Bilbao will hang them next year.

The Kilika publishing house has already won the Pilgrim in 2019 with a beautiful book on trinquets and palm games. For this Basque country in colors, Vincent Ahetz-Etcheber, founder of Kilika, carried out very good editorial work for a year. “The texts in three languages, French, Basque and Spanish, restore the uniqueness of the Basque Country,” underlines Philippe Bonnet, chief heritage curator and member of the jury. “These incredible autochromes suddenly make us very close to these villagers, bathers or pelota players from the beginning of the 20th century,” comments Sophie Laurant, senior history and heritage reporter at Pilgrim, also a member of the jury. “Striking in its poetic beauty and in the attraction it exerts, we discover an art in its youth, before more sophisticated technical processes, which shows the grace of a bygone time,” adds the biographer and historian of art Alain Vircondelet, who sits alongside them.

Kanak culture revealed

There is no doubt that Basques, great travelers, have settled in New Caledonia, a French possession in the South Pacific since the 1850s. But if the “Caillou” is regularly talked about, it is more for the conflicts interiors as well as for its heritage.

In 2013, the Quai Branly-Jacques-Chirac museum in Paris highlighted for the first time the Kanak culture, the first inhabitants of the archipelago.

Thanks to the work The heritage of New Caledonia, edited by Hervé Chopin, winner of the Pèlerin Prize outside Nouvelle-Aquitaine, knowledge of this overseas territory is expanding considerably. “This book, enriched by Anne Chopin’s beautiful photographic report, is quite simply a revelation,” Philippe Bonnet does not hesitate to say.

The Bordeaux resident Hervé Chopin, whose publishing house is celebrating its 30th anniversary and already has several Books on the heritage of the Caribbean, called on around forty specialists who scanned the entire New Caledonian heritage through the centuries : material and immaterial, Kanak and colonial, historical and landscape, religious, economic and industrial, all illustrated by some 1,400 photographs.

This unprecedented sum of 600 pages is sold at a deliberately modest price of 25 euros, “thanks to the patronage of the Clément Foundation, in Martinique,” ​​explains Hervé Chopin. We wanted the work to be accessible to everyone. » For Alain Vircondelet, “made by Caledonians who love their land, this book is a fine example of transmission, tolerance and popularization”. We couldn't say it better.