The cycle of exhibition-conference “Valbelle, Myth or Fiction?” traces the origins of the photographic act to a specific moment in the history of 18th century France.
The ruins of the Valbelle castle on the hill overlooking Tourves
The first step of my research was thus to lift this veil of mystery by conducting rigorous researches on the history of the family, the enigmatic figure of Omer de Valbelle who turned this provincial castle into the “Versailles of the south”, the fate of the objects that decorated it and the process by which all this came to be dispersed after the revolution. While on a stay in Tourves in June 2005, I photographed objects from the castle, particularly paintings, kept in the museum of Draguignan, the administrative centre of the Var department where Tourves is located. These prints then gave me the idea to recreate the castle as it might have been by photographing images of the objects of the past within the context of today’s ruins. For more than two centuries, the castle had been plundered of all its riches. For the first time, the flow of events was reversed and objects were coming back to where they belonged. They did so as mere images, but then again, the true nature of the photographic image was also in the background of my research.
I couldn’t help but notice that Omer de Valbelle had initiated the work on his castle and its park, at about the same time that Tiphaigne de la Roche was publishing his groundbreaking book. There was somehow a meaningful if esoteric link between these two men emblematic of the Age of Enlightenment. I thus decided to base the next step of my work on a fictional visit of Tiphaigne to Tourves, invited by Omer to come and spend Christmas in his castle in 1771 while I did the same in 2005. Tiphaigne and I would then collaborate across time and space to ‘re-member’ the castle through the use of the photographic medium and show to Omer the puzzling sight of what would become of his dear castle. By imagining the (possible) meeting of the two men, I created a fiction in which the conceptual seed of a pictorial frozen moment in time planted in the 18th century became the infinite virtual ramifications of today's society of images. |
Valbelle, Myth or Fiction?
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Valbelle, Myth or Fiction?
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Valbelle, Myth or Fiction?
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En Flânant Valbelle v2.0.10
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