Benoît Gallot, the man who captures the life of the Père-Lachaise cemetery

Curator at Père-Lachaise, Benoît Gallot walks its paths to photograph an unsuspected but diverse life. His discoveries and photos are brought together in a book, “The Secret Life of a Cemetery”.

Benoît Gallot is undoubtedly the Parisian who can boast of having the quietest neighbors in the capital. Curator at the Père-Lachaise cemetery, he resides within the very grounds of the most famous necropolis in the world. If living on a site dedicated to the rest of the dead is surprising, few know that it is in reality a teeming place of life. Above all animal life, which Benoît Gallot photographs once the cemetery gate is closed behind the last visitors. We also owe him the famous photos of the Père-Lachaise foxes who agitated Paris in 2020. Benoît Gallot brought together his photos, his experience and his knowledge in his first book, The Secret Life of a Cemetery.

It all started well with the famous red canines, but not the ones we suspect. In 2011, then curator of the Parisian cemetery of Ivry-sur-Seine, Benoît Gallot agreed with his teams to follow the “zero phytosanitary products” project of the Paris City Hall. This test measure then aims to gradually eliminate pesticides from spaces frequented by the public. In a few years, the fauna and flora regain their rights between the graves: “We really saw the cemetery transform and green up. »

That's when he notices the birds. Initiated by an ornithology enthusiast, he uses his patience to capture them with his lens. Then he photographed cats, insects, until the surprise, in 2017: a litter of fox cubs frolicking happily between the tombstones. His Instagram account, @la_vie_au_cimetiere, was born immediately. The objective is simple: to show the cemetery differently to Parisians, to “that they come with less reluctance”.

The following year, Benoît Gallot joined Père-Lachaise, with his wife and children. For this son of a marble worker, steles in the garden are nothing new. Nor for his children, who previously lived in Ivry and are aware of their exceptional living environment. “ One day, my son invited a friend over. They were playing in his room and saw a fox through the window. He was quite proudhe confides. We were still lucky enough to have 43 hectares in the middle of Paris during the first confinement. » The curator then had the meeting there which shook up the way people looked at the Parisian necropolis.

While Père-Lachaise is closed to visitors, history repeats itself: while walking, Benoît Gallot comes across a fox cub. An unexpected and touching first meeting, which he seeks to reproduce. Armed with his camera, outside of his working hours, he walks the paved paths of the cemetery, looking for the burrow. His efforts paid off beyond his expectations. The photos of the fox cubs soften the capital and send the media machine into overdrive. The curator reactivates his Instagram account and then photographs cats, crows and tits, but also parakeets and martens. This diverse and unsuspected fauna changes the behavior of visitors: they finally raise their heads to observe the birds and look for cats and foxes. But the real success for Benoît Gallot is the families who are at peace knowing their dead loved ones resting in an environment teeming with life.

To read
The Secret Life of a CemeteryBenoît Gallot, ed. Les Arènes, 240 p., €21.90.

Article published on 1^is November 2022