This book has a crazy charm and a rare tenderness. The photographer here is Didier Bizet. The title of his book: Grâce à Elle (Thanks to Her). “Elle” is his mother of course! He gave us this text:
This book, the most important for me, is the result of a year of work. My mother Jeanne was born in 1922 and died in 2020. The day after her death, I imposed this work on myself: that of paying tribute to her so as not to bury her forever. This is how a long work began while attempting to photograph her burial. Then, I went to rummage through my family’s photographic archives: stacks of boxes filled with carefully dated and classified slides, yellow envelopes full of prints from France from the time of President Albert Lebrun. Then a back and forth took place between Paris and Lyon, from the window of the train I photograph the landscape that tasted of sorrow, the Burgundy countryside was dull, in the distance the Morvan was indifferent to me. “Leaves being trodden on, a moving train, life passes by. As Guillaume Apollinaire said. What will remain of our memories, those of our parents and grandparents when our digital photos become obsolete, lost forever in the infinity of the cloud? In the apartment almost empty of feelings and soon of furniture, I photograph all the objects that saw me grow up before they too disappear, insignificant objects tucked away in the wardrobes and shelves of the apartment that is becoming more empty every day. Grâce à Elle is a collection of tenderness, a sentimental parade, a family story. This work established itself as an extension of the past, a romance in which I was a resident for more than fifty years, thanks to her.
Didier Bizet
Didier Bizet : Grâce à Elle
192 pages.
140 photographs.
Format: 14 x 21 cm. € 26.
Canvas cover with a nested oval photograph.
Artic white paper 150 g.
350 copies.
From Revelatoer editions.
