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"In my time I have seen a hundred craftsmen and a hundred workmen wiser and happier than any university don."
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533 - 1592)
I made this series of photographs around the given theme : Bordeaux and the Bordelais – Eating, drinking, thinking. I put this photographic project under the auspices of Montaigne who was a philospher, Mayor of Bordeaux, humanist, aristocrat and farmer. Montaigne was close to the earth, ideas and power. He was interested in people without making social distinctions, unusual for that time. In his work Essays he praises individual liberty and the right to happiness, regardless of social or financial success.
Around Langon in the Bordeaux region, I in turn met my contempory humanists : fishermen, wine makers, lumberjacks and land owners. We spoke and I photographed them. Living in Europe and in France which continually evolves towards a modern and uniform state, the people that feature in this work struggle to maintain their livelihoods which respect the past and the environment. Aristocrats or not, they live a life close to nature, to humanity and to a time which runs at its own rythm.
Roland Dutreuilh a Bazadaise cattle breeder in his son-in-law’s Palombière. Every october many stop working for a month to hunt doves in their Palombières. It is an activity which remains very masculin, where it is also an excuse to eat and drink a lot of good food and wine non-stop for a month without coming in contact with modern day life. If a Palombière group of five to six men manage to catch 40 doves between them during the month, it is considered to be a good year.