"Etienne et moi": exhibition of photographs by Jean-Pierre VERRUE

Exhibition of black and white photographs. Exhibition organized by the Criou Livres association.

Jean-Pierre Verrue was born in 1949 in the suburbs of Lille. A passionate photographer, he turned his passion into his profession, training at the prestigious Institution Saint Luc de Tournay in Belgium.
In the 1970s, he founded a photography company in Lille that would become one of the largest in northern France: Obert & Verrue. When the advent of digital photography arrived, Jean-Pierre Verrue trained again at the University of Lille.
Residing in our valleys for several years, he continues to make the most of everything that catches his eye; he is always happy to share his work.
Étienne and I [excerpt from the exhibition manifesto, by Olivier Sirven]
Étienne is 20 years old. He's fighting in the war. His war. He was a patriot and a member of the Resistance during the Spanish Civil War. There, they called him Esteban.
Jean-Pierre is 10 years old. He still remembers the day Huguette appeared at the door of his parents' house in Mons-en-Baroeul. Perhaps he already guessed that this woman and her husband, Étienne, would accompany him throughout his life?

Jean-Pierre is over 70 years old. He has always kept this black binder containing texts and photographs close to him. He too was barely 20 when, as a photography student at the Saint-Luc school in Tournai, Belgium, he created this photographic work on Étienne.
These intersecting perspectives across the ages cannot leave one indifferent.
Jean-Pierre photographed Étienne in familiar places: his parents' house,
Étienne and Huguette's council apartment. We see family heirlooms: a 1950s lamp, a record player, a sofa. We also see a piece of a painting hanging above the sofa, a painting that Jean-Pierre himself painted when he was a young artist in Saint-Luc.

All these kaleidoscopic elements of memory come together to form a vivid, inverted mental image, which Jean-Pierre offers us today.
The photographs were taken over three months, from September to December 1967. Six rolls of film were used. Jean-Pierre found them, digitized them, and now presents them in a large format, with the original texts.

Complément de localisation

Building "Le Petit Bellevue" (ground floor), 4 route de Taninges.
At the village entry, coming from Verchaix, the library is located next to the hotel Le Gai Soleil, after the school on the left.

Complément de réservation

Without reservation