Our edition of the day is entirely devoted to Jean-Marie Périer. Here is the sixth part with a selection of his recent images.
Today, I live in the marvelous countryside of the french Aveyron.
(Photo No 1)
If an artist friend of mine or a magazine ask me to shoot a picture for them, I do it with pleasure, but it doesn’t happen very often. When a photographer is no longer attached to a magazine, let’s face it, he’s not much anymore. And things have changed, these days there is no lightness, things have become too serious for me. The party is over. That’s normal, let’s make way for young people.
(Photos No 2, 3, 4)
For fifteen years now, I have been writing books for the pleasure of it. Going from autobiography to essays, books of photography to novels. Among other things, I published a biography of Daniel Filipacchi’s unbelievable destiny. (Uncle Dan)
(Photo No 5)
I just released a new book of short stories. (Advertising time: “Close to the sky, far away from paradise”. Calmann-Levy). The next step is a novel.
(Photo No 6)
And I organize exhibitions all over the place. If someone had told me fifty years ago that I would end my life exhibiting my pictures, I would never have believed it.
(Photo No 7, 8, 9)
Everywhere I go in the world, people receive me very kindly and look at my work for what it is, in other words, an unpretentious testimony of a bygone era. Strangely, in France, there is a certain contempt for popular art. We respect “classical” or “contemporary” art, but the official authorities often show disdain and are snobs about popular art.
The one who helped me get a foot in the door is not a photography professional, when he became mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoe organized his first large exhibition with my pictures, only because they reminded him of his own youth and because he wanted to please the public. That’s all. In two months 150.000 rushed to the “salle Saint-Jean” inside the town hall. In our country, the people in charge of cultural affairs all belonging to the same Parisian circle consider that their vision of the pictures is more important than the pictures themselves. They don’t really take in consideration the crowd’s pleasure. Obviously, I’m not stupid enough to think that the “normal people” come for my “unbelievable talent !!!”, nor to improve their knowledge. They just come to see again the images of their youth.
If my exhibitions are not an example of excellence in photography. My pictures are just little stones of memories from a remote time. Thank God, I never tried to be recognized by the professionals. What moves me the most, is that anywhere in France, on the street of any small village, people are smiling at me because I remind them of the good times of their youth. My father, Daniel Filipacchi, Régis Pagniez or Jean Demachy…Finally, luck is nothing else than meeting someone.
And the trip was worth it!
Jean-Marie Périer
