He is a recognized writer, with many distinctions, who for the first time puts his gaze and his pen on Périgord. He celebrates his childhood summers, spent carefree in the house of the grandparents living near Le Bugue. It evokes trees and streams, historic sites and local bike races… in short, a rural life borrows both simplicity and amused nostalgia. A time that older people can remember, a time that younger people can dream of.
Many of René-Jacques’ magnificent photographs are unpublished and reproduced in duotone by one of France’s great art printers (Escourbiac).
Dordogne, summer 1960 published by Ruisseau
“In 1960, I was eleven years old. For thirty years, I returned to the Dordogne, in summer, sometimes in winter, with my grandparents then with my grandmother and now a slight melancholy covered the place, with my parents and cousins, with my unfailing lover. , with our children.
For thirty years, life, if I may say so, has taken me away from it. Going back to it today, in thought, and having the chance of it being through a book to be written, delights me. In their own way, René-Jacques’ photographs promote the illusion of half a return to childhood and half of a resurrection. Opportunity is the thief – I am composing this little old-fashioned history-geography lesson, as we received them in the past from the municipal and as I gave them in my turn in high school, before some hazy concepts come to confuse the marvelous teaching of the description of the earth. I) Natural conditions – II) Human activities.
Obviously, the imagination will have its part and very clever whoever knows how to untangle them. » Bernard Chambaz
Listen to Romain Bondoneau, editor of the collection in the Reading Corner of France Bleu Périgord:
– Ruisseau Editions