Once upon a time… That’s how all fairy tales begin, and the same goes for the Gacilly photo festival, transforming a small Breton village at the edge of the Brocéliande forest into an immense, outdoor exhibition with 300 photographs, open day and night for four months.
La Gacilly’s fairy tale also begins with a grandmother’s recipe: an herbal cure for hemorrhoids. A young man from the village named Yves decides to bottle and sell it. And thus began the saga of the worldwide cosmetics brand Yves Rocher. Its founder was always sensitive to the relationship between man and nature, and Yves passed on those convictions to his son, Jacques, who opened the festival eleven years ago. La Gacilly is like a village fête, a scene from afilm directed by Jacques Tati or Jean Renoir. The villagers seem to get more involved here than in any other festival I’ve seen, and families and children were scattered throughout the 20 exhibitions.
