“Portraits of (an) age” is how we could translate the title of the exhibition at the Aurillac museum (February to June 2011). It is a series of portraits of people changed by age, but it is also meant as a portrait of a particular era.
These portraits are of old people from all walks of life in the Cantal. They came to get their photo done by Léger Parry in his studio in Aurillac. This was at the end of the 19th century and early 20th. Once a year, the museum displays photos from the Parry studio, with a different theme each year (family, children, republican celebrations, etc.).
These grandparents all have the same sitting posture and the same solemn and dignified expression. Back then, people used to have photographs taken only at important moments of their lives: baptism, confirmation, wedding, first child (second, third…), and even (last but not least) their death bed portrait.
The people in these portraits, who are all well past their three score and ten, know they will probably die soon, and so they want to have their portrait done, not really for themselves, but for their family, as a souvenir, or even as a photo for their tomb. It was a way to stay with their families forever, not to be forgotten. Their status as the head of the family, as the ancestor, was embodied in these photos (they were often retouched to show the sitter at his best).
We no longer do these “last portraits”, though we do reminisce about our dearly departed by sometimes looking at old photographs of them taken during a holiday or a big family dinner.
The exhibition is not just ethnographic, a documentary exhibition of olden times. The photos themselves have artistic quality; they are extraordinary portraits that really convey the sitters’ characters (we can imagine their lives). The exhibition also makes us question how we treat elderly people nowadays, even how we consider life and death…
Article by Tereza S.
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