The ZAD of Notre-Dame-des-Landes has been making headlines for several years and no one has ever revealed the true nature of it. From 2014 to 1919, Philippe Graton has traveled the ZAD from the inside, photographing in silver format this universe and the daily life of this alternative society. This long-term commitment gives us today an exceptional photographic work, a unique and historical restitution of this marginal experience whose interest has never been so current. This book unveils more than eighty unpublished photographs, as well as a transcript of the author’s field notes, to follow as an adventure.
Exposition au musée de la Photographie à Charleroi du 28 septembre 2019 au 19 janvier 2020
11, avenue Paul Pastur 6032 Charleroi – Belgique – www.museephoto.be
Exposition au centre d’art Apollonia à Strasbourg du 25 septembre au 22 octobre 2019
Philippe Graton
Photographe
French born in Brussels in 1961, Philippe Graton grew up among the storytellers: René Goscinny, Albert Uderzo, Jean-Michel Charlier or his father Jean Graton, sacred monsters of the comic strip. No wonder he becomes a screenwriter himself and his practice of photography at age thirteen is always linked to writing. A life of narratives in the form of text and images led Le Mans to film plateaus in Vietnam, Cambodia or the war in Bosnia, which he photographed for the Sygma agency. From 2014 to 2019, Philippe Graton photographed the ZAD of Notre-Dame-des-Landes in silver and notes in his notebooks the reality of his daily life. A unique testimony, different from anything we have seen or heard on the ZAD.
