“My father loved France and the French so much…”

A bitter cold sweeps the courtyard of the Troyes media library late in the afternoon of January 16. Inside, a group of visitors look up from the newspapers they are leafing through, wide-eyed when Mayor François Baroin, his friend the former minister and leader of the right Christian Jacob and Claude Chirac pass by. , the daughter of the former French president…

Friday evening, the trio came to inaugurate the exhibition, “Jacques Chirac, a president beyond the cliché”, created from photos of the former official photographer of the “great”, Eric Lefeuvre, also present for the occasion. We see again the former head of state immortalized in the four corners of the world, he, curious about Man and cultures. Everywhere, his tall silhouette in black and white, right hand often raised, fingers spread. His signature move. “They had very beautiful hands,” notes her daughter, (re)discovering the photos. “Do you know all these photos, Claude? » asks Baroin. ” No ! » swears the former communications director of the Elysée, who today watches over the memory of her father, who died in 2019, and over the health of her mother, now very weakened.

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In the images, we relive key moments, sometimes historic, of these two mandates. Like that of a “wild” bilateral interview, in 2003, between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Chirac, announcing France's refusal to participate in the war in Iraq.

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A man who loved others and who knew how to say it at the end of his existence…

François Baroin

“He was a protective and demanding president, attentive, never locked in bubbles of certainty, with distance,” remembers the mayor of Troyes, François Baroin. A man who loved others and who knew how to say it at the end of his existence…”

“In these photos, you see the president, I see first of all a father, who educated me, gave me principles, a taste for work,” says Claude Chirac. He taught us how to dress, too. “Right in your boots”, don’t talk about your feelings. Never. And humor, we laughed a lot with Jacques Chirac… He was a man who loved France and the French so much, who knew their daily lives but also the world and its cultures very well, whose complexity he knew how to understand. I am happy to open this year coinciding with the thirtieth anniversary of his accession to the presidency of the Republic, here in Troyes. […] Everyone knows the ties that united the Baroin family, and my father…”

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It was Chirac who inaugurated this media library where a delocalized council of ministers was held in 2006

Another place, another atmosphere, in the magnificent neighboring “Great Hall”, with 45,000 old documents stored, where a relocated council of ministers was held in 2006. Four years earlier, it was Jacques Chirac himself who inaugurated the media library, which has borne his name since 2019.

Claude Chirac discovers in this immense room with its impressive perspective, a book of fables by La Fontaine illustrated by Japanese artists. “He would have loved it!” » she told the staff. “Claude quickly understood that History was also transmitted through images,” notes photographer Eric Lefeuvre, in his speech. “In 20 years, your images will remain,” she told me. Jacques Chirac loved photography, I even think he could have been a photographer. But photos of himself didn’t interest him…”

“My father was not focused on himself, nor on the past,” confides Claude Chirac. He had no ego, he didn't like seeing himself, hearing himself. And he was never interested in what people would say after him, he didn't spend his time building his statue. We pay dearly for it, sometimes! But thanks to this exhibition, we find the values ​​he carried, more than what remains and his political legacy…”