Between you and me…
Trees give us everything. Alone in the middle of a field, a tree can draw the perspective of a valley and make it more beautiful. Some of them have given up their fibers to make the paper for this book. Thousands of them protect our great apes ancestors from profit-obsessed merchants. By the millions, they are relentless, tireless rescuers, to breathe a little more oxygen into our atmosphere.
That’s why I like them. And much more.
At 16, I chose photography rather than diplomas, which, it is true, did not hold out their arms to me. Perhaps I hadn’t had the chance to meet teachers who could help me perceive the pleasure of learning. Quietly, the trees took the vacant place. Those in this book will remain, sorry for historians, my favorite story masters. In front of each of them, then during the years of work with the team that accompanied and supported me, I felt the extraordinary emotion that arises from this simple observation: if we look at them, if we listen to them, trees guide us towards the discovery of the story they lived. As would do, to shed light on the past by making it alive, ancestors able to escape the constraints of their biological clock.
With this obvious and peaceful force that allows them to have no need to say to convince, the trees also offered me a reminder of some precious truths. Sometimes tiny, sometimes giant, they respect what nature allows them to do. Diverse, they manage to find the balance of their coexistence. Stubborn, they do everything to develop as soon as they anchor themselves with a few roots, disappear if mistreated and manage to return when the threat goes away. The contact with the trees, those you will discover in this book and the others, inspires me with infinite reflections, joyful or darker, always precious. The trees remind me of my weaknesses without judging them, they encourage me to be brave, they exhort me to humility.
Après des années de recherches, d’incertitudes, de déceptions parfois et plus souvent d’émerveillements, bref de travail, je suis heureux aujourd’hui de proposer ce livre à votre regard. Laissez votre imagination ouvrir les chemins sensibles qui vous mèneront vers la liberté de vous raconter chaque histoire comme vous le souhaitez. Et permettez-moi, ce vœu : que ce livre, doucement, devienne le vôtre.
After years of research, uncertainty, sometimes disappointment and more often amazement, the bottom line is work, I am happy today to offer this book to your eyes. Let your imagination open the sensitive paths that will lead you to the freedom to tell each story as you wish. And allow me, this wish: that this book, slowly, becomes yours.
To the trees and to you, thank you.
Richard Melloul
Richard Melloul : Les Arbres témoins de l’histoire
Editeur : Michel Lafon
ISBN : 9782749939582
