Black and white images, stripped landscapes
Anne says: “Nadia, our veterinarian, came with him one day. It’s his companion. He asked me if he could take photos while Nadia tended to a cow. He liked the atmosphere, the lights, my work. He asked me if he could come back. I learned that his name was Benoit Lange and, by incredible coincidence, I had used one of his photos – an Indian mother kissing her baby – for my son’s birth announcement.”
Benoit came for two years. He wanted to do an exhibition and then a book. The album has just been released. Strikingly beautiful. Black and white images, bare landscapes, in spring or under the snow, shadows of man and children followed by a horse, stables, fodder, tools, Anne and a goose, Anne and her pitchfork, Anne in sunset. The cows of course, in close-up or which seem to be doing a dance step. Benoit Lange quotes a poet: “Cows are nice because they eat flowers.”
Anne Chenevard grew up on the farm, the seventh generation of Chenevards on this land. In the 19th century, Rosalie, a descendant, took over the estate, like her. Long before succeeding her father, Anne increased her training and careers: a CFC in horticulture, work with disabled people, a job as a nurse’s assistant and a stay in Peru in an orphanage. “I was 24, I wanted to see something else. I had spotted this place, Los Gorriones, which meant “sparrows”. I went there without having any contact first, knocked on their door and they told me to come in. I worked there for two years.”
She returns to Switzerland and gives birth to Léni, the fruit of a love affair with a Peruvian. She studied nursing for four years then quickly obtained a CFC as a farmer, “because retirement was approaching for my parents”. His brother, expected to take over the farm, had other plans. There is no question for Anne of abandoning the 40 hectares and the cows, in particular in honor of her father who died in 2021.
Find here the portraits of “Time”
“I observe worse situations in the hospital”
In 2017, she invested in the field while holding a position as a nurse in the infectious disease department of the CHUV. To have additional income. “But also because I love life in its entirety. And then it puts things into perspective. The agricultural world tends to consider itself the most to be pitied, I observe worse situations in the hospital.”
The fact remains that in the countryside, everyday life is not the most joyful. Forty-four thousand milk producers in Switzerland in 1996, 17,000 now. She mentions, among other things, large-scale distribution, which creates a chain of poverty by paying 70 cents, or even 60 cents, for a liter of milk. Faireswiss was founded with this liter of milk from which 1 franc goes to the farmer. “It is now a cooperative of 77 producers which is celebrating its 5th anniversary. We sold 6.7 million liters of fair trade milk and paid 2.2 million francs to our cooperators,” she explains. Anne Chenevard especially welcomes the entry of fair trade milk into 76 Aldi branches. Manor, Aligro, the collective restaurants of the city of Lausanne and the CHUV followed. Not to mention a good number of small grocery stores. However, she believes that there is still a lot to do: “Our country produces 3.5 billion liters of milk per year but only sells 1.7 million liters of fair trade milk.”
To maintain her autonomy – she feeds her cattle with her own fodder – Anne Chenevard has invested a lot: new large barn, free stalls and milking machine, a real robot which identifies and dismisses with a jet of water a cow which presents itself too often. No need to get up at 5 a.m. for milking anymore. You get up around 6:30 a.m. And don’t tell the breeder that this robot would keep her away from her animals. “On the contrary, the cows are calmer, less worried. They are sensitive to our affects. The robot is always in the same mood. If the animal is tense, it is because we have transmitted our stress to it,” she explains. Anne says she wants to restore the nobility of the dairy cow. “For our food security, we need ruminants that exploit areas like here, with fairly hilly topography, where it is difficult to cultivate anything other than grassland. This provides milk, but also meat to feed the country.” She shows Benoit Lange’s book again: “It’s a testimony to our activist project, it builds bridges and moves agriculture into the artistic field,” she says.
-Profile
1981 Birth in Moudon.
2006 Departure for Peru.
2008 Birth of his son.
2017 Take back the farm.
2021 Death of his father.
2024 “The Choice of Earth” (Editions Favre).
