Gard Cévennes lights to take in your eyes

With Journey to the Cévennes of Jean DuBoisberrangerhere is a magnificent book which could well be a very appreciated Christmas present! Clearly, the Alcide editions, 100% from Gard, do things well.

The digital revolution presents many opportunities. Above all, it requires, for the paper book, a singularly studied and careful production, so that the pleasure of the object regains its full place. “ We therefore pay particular attention to the choice of paper, the graphics of the layout, the typography and of course the covers. So that the pleasure of reading is always more intense » explains Yann Cruvellier, founder of Alcide editions, in the 2000s in Nîmes.

Alcide editions have brought great photographers to express their talent in the region. Several works have left their mark on regional publishing

The Cévennes National Park is the only one to be inhabited in France. However, the photographs collected in this book do not contain any human presence.

For the founder of Alcide editions, Yann Cruvellier, “ Cévennes Lumières is a real reissue: by changing paper and format, we had to review the rendering of the photos and completely rethink the book. Thierry Vezon's work is now recognized nationally and internationally: this year he exhibited in China and participated in two of the most renowned Nature photography festivals, in Montier-en-Der and Chamonix, flying high the colors of the region. . The photographs are accompanied by a presentation of the Cévennes by Patrick Cabanel, whose talent as a writer is well known in addition to naturally that of a historian.. »

It is true that this new baby from the Nîmes house will delight many readers.

Thierry Vezon shares his quest for atmosphere and light in exceptional places in the Cévennes.

From the tragic sky of the storm to the one that suddenly clears the horizon, from valleys to peaks, from shale to granite, this photograph transports us beyond the image, towards the soul of this country. This look is accompanied by a text by the historian Patrick Cabanel.

Let us recall here that Patrick Cabanel, director of studies at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, has devoted his work to the Cévennes, to the Protestants of France as well as to the School of the Republic. Landscape and memory run through his works.

This “large format” pays particular attention to the subtleties of the tones. Thierry Vezon's photographs have earned him international recognition. He was notably a member of the jury for Wildlife Photographer of the Year, one of the most prestigious prizes in nature photography.

The Cévennes

« It is a particular country, marked, a little more than others, by an accumulation of books, texts, photographs. Generations of visitors, tourists, pilgrims have followed one another; and generations of writers, historians, geographers, and even editors. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Robert-Louis Stevenson), French Academy (André Chamson), Goncourt Prize (Jean Carrière) » can we read in the presentation of this work.

How can we manage to speak again to a country so often read and written about? Thierry Vezon assumes his freedom as a naturalist and wildlife photographer: he captures a landscape, a nature, with almost no trace of men and their work, favoring the highlands (Mont-Aigoual, Causse, Mont-Lozère , Cévennes ridges).

We could speak of a hinterland, and of late seasons (autumn, winter, spring: since here, as in so many other difficult regions, the only “season” is summer, the high season, as the agencies and prices say). Of late days, again, to see the relative frequency of sunsets, remembered not for their supposed splendor, but for the nostalgic light, and yet of extreme purity, which they add to a country that orchestrates and already magnifies a supremely sad form of beauty.

« Following Thierry Vezon, we have the feeling that an invitation is being made to us to herbalize, walk, or even read the Bronte sisters. » As a counterpoint to the poetic writing of the photographer, it is a question here of telling in a few pages the main features of a geography, a history, a culture, taking the pretext of this formula of Stevenson discovering, since the Col de Finiels, on Mont-Lozère, the land of the Camisards: “ a romantic note at the bottom of the page of history or world. »

Thierry Vezon

Thierry Vezon was attached, in a previous book (Cévennes, Crossed perspectives), to a series of gestures and professions: around beehives, chestnuts to dry, sweet onions, Anduze vases…

Here he chose to work, in series, on the faces of nature: rocks, beech, broom, chestnut, heather, orchid, daffodil, stream, waterfall, fog, frost , snow… We also find roads and paths which only seem to lead to themselves, a frozen observatory as if for the set of a film which has not been filmed.

« With Thierry Vezon, everyone enters alone, as undoubtedly it should, in these summit horizons, this book has at least a thousand meters of average altitude… Like a character from the German painter Friedrich, we are confronted with powerful landscapes, perhaps abandoned by men, probably not by gods, and which could be worrying, if we had to fear solitude or the acuteness of difficult seasons » explains Patrick Cabanel.

The skies are almost never blue, Thierry Vezon readily admits that his mood is more Scottish than Mediterranean, and this country is of the same essence. In reality, we find all the shades of gray, black, mauve, sometimes orange.

Here and there, you would swear you were dealing with a technicolor view taken from a biblical peplum. Elsewhere, photography borders on abstraction or calligraphy.

« THE ” series » are very strong, without any feeling of repetition, on the contrary: instead of having a single photo in front of you, the fact that there are several gives the feeling that you are entering a landscape and that 'we have time to let ourselves be penetrated by him » continues Patrick Cabanel.

Is this due to an “excess” of technical, visual, imaginary talent on the part of the author? Obviously. But this talent is perhaps also in the eyes of each of us: the habitation of the landscape by an aurora, a color, a light, a polar cold, a gnarled wood, a forest damp with mist, leaves each traveler with the freedom to install in the image things that are only his and therefore only he can see.

Supreme freedom, supreme enjoyment in the face of a photograph which is not talkative, like these highlands, and which thereby respects the silence (and the intimate stories) which our eyes, our memory, our soul need .

Cévennes Lumières by Thierry Vezon (photographs) and Patrick Cabanel (text), 176 pages in 24 x 28 cm format for 29 euros