STROLLS AT THE PÈRE LACHAISE – The Père Lachaise is one of the most visited places of the capital, it is also its largest green space and of course it is one of the Parisian cemeteries that houses the most famous people.
But my work focused on the romantic character of the place expressed by the neo-Gothic architecture of the chapels, the imposing monuments laden with symbols and the organization of the English garden in its old part.
That’s why I began to photograph the cemetery in the evening, in winter, one of the seasons that inspired me the most, conducive to the melancholy that suggests romanticism.
I imagined this exhibition as a stroll and a reverie to make you want to discover this place, respectfully freed for the occasion of the celebrities who live there and the history that accompanies them.
It is also a way of apprehending the vanity of men and their desire to want to exist after their death. It is finally at a time when for many the death is taboo, the opportunity to try to tame it a little. – Louis Gaillard
