For thirty years I lived in the shadow of Jacques Chirac.
When his name is mentioned, I do not think of the Mayor of Paris, the politician or the President of the Republic, but of a man with a permanent curiosity displaying a constant smile and a fantastic vitality, deeply turned towards others and, like the great artists, carrying a message that will be understood only later.
Always listening to the other, he was deeply convinced that we must be inspired by all civilisations. If he was proud that Europe was at the origin of the movement for the emancipation of peoples through human rights, that did not mean that there was no hierarchy among civilizations, each bearing in its own way a a different view of the world, none of which can claim the truth. Going to meet cultures and marveling at their riches was not for Jacques Chirac a media or anecdotal posture but the result of a deep love for humanity in all its facets.
My very first photograph of him goes back to 1984. He was Mayor of Paris, he was 52 years old, I was 18. It was during a reception at the Town Hall, I had been called to replace Press service photographers, I will always remember how impressed and trembling I was at the sight of this great tall guy.
My very last image of him dates from the summer of 2016, I wanted to make photos of his hands and wanted him to pose with one of the African statuettes he kept preciously in his office rue de Lille, he Kindly accepted and even gave a faint smile. These were my last pictures of him.
Jacques Chirac did not like the pictures in which he appeared, but he liked photography, the one that showed the other, the others, the one which allowed him to satisfy his curiosity and his questions about the world. I have always been struck by the fact that he had no pictures of himself in his office at the Elysee.
I still have in mind an official trip to Mali in October 2003 in the Dogon country where we could attend a ceremonial dance. I had the idea to offer him for his birthday an album retracing this trip with photographs of him, and also dances, and masks …
What was my surprise to see the album being returned to me a week later with all the pictures where he appeared and which he had cut out and kept all those about masks and dancing!
Eric Lefeuvre
A president beyond the cliché
The image of a public man, let alone that of a President of the Republic, can not be left to chance. That’s why a number of them attach to themselves the services of a photographer.
It’s Jacques Lowe for John Fitzgerald Kennedy – we remember the famous picture of little John-John playing under his father’s office at the White House – or more recently Pete Souza, for Barack Obama.
Jacques Chirac chose Eric Lefeuvre. A licensed photographer, from the Paris City Hall to the Élysée, Eric Lefeuvre has accompanied him for more than thirty-five years, following him in all his activities, in the provinces, in Europe, in the world. An attentive observer behind the scenes of power, he has realized, without ever putting himself forward, thousands of clichés that constitute an irreplaceable testimony about a president who has entered history today.
Most of his photographs were taken off the mark and reveal an empathetic and warm man. He followed him day after day trying, not without difficulty, putting his footsteps in those of a president who strides the world and goes through the crowds to the chagrin of his security service.
Jacques Chirac, Eric Lefeuvre tells us, liked photography but remained indifferent to the one who represented him. Only a few family photographs were on his desk at the Élysée, including a portrait of his grandson Martin and Georges Pompidou.
On several images you can see the president’s eye on the viewfinder of a camera. We knew his taste for Asian arts and primitive arts but did we know that he had a secret passion for the art of Niépce, the inventor of photography in the early nineteenth century?
Supporting the Month of Photography, opening photographic departments in museums and deciding to create the European house of Photography, the Mayor of Paris, in fact, strongly helped make the City of Lights the world’s capital of photography. He appreciated the works of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Irving Penn or Bettina Rheims …
In this exhibition, Eric Lefeuvre’s images illustrate the journeys of a citizen president of the world who gave his function a human dimension. Enlightened by photography, it seems both near and far. We understand better then the place apart that he occupies in the heart of the French and that makes him one of the most beloved presidents of the fifth Republic.
Jean-Luc Monterosso
curator of the exhibition with the assistance of Jean-François Camp
THE EXHIBITION
An exhibition of sixty black and white and color photographs, most of which are unpublished, by Éri © Lefeuvre, photographer, author and journalist. For more than thirty years, he never stopped photographing the statesman who today is one of the most popular French political figures. Thirty years spent rubbing shoulders, accompanying, to observe but especially to follow with his “Leica” this unusual character, secret and mysterious that is attaching but above all deeply human.
UN PRÉSIDENT CITOYEN DU MONDE
JACQUES CHIRAC SOUS LE REGARD D’ÉRIC LEFEUVRE
NOVEMBER 25, 2019 – MARCH 1, 2020
CAMPO SANTO
CHAPELLE DE LA FUNÉRARIA
Rue Amiral Ribeil
Perpignan
