Located in Villeneuve for 30 years, the famous photographer has been claiming a simple life far from the rhinestones and projectors.
“PErsonne is safe from a bowl.“ He has a sense of formula and willingly distill it to show that he was actually lucky at certain periods of his life. That morning this morning “Bul blow” led him straight towards the south of France. “I had just spent ten years in the United States and I wanted to find the campaign of my childhood, the real campaign.”
“I wanted to find the campaign of my childhood”
Jean-Marie Périer therefore set sail to the south and stopped a little by chance in Figeac, in the neighboring lot. “I entered a real estate agency and I came out with a close farm, without being too much, from Villeneuve. Today, I have been in Aveyron for thirty years and I am very happy. ”
The former photographer of the period “Yéyé”, the 1960s, among others, because he quickly collaborated in “Salut les Copains” of his mentor Daniel Filipacchi, in Paris Match, to her … therefore turned his back on the world of American and Parisian sequins for much more summary comfort. “This rural world that I wanted so much and which is especially not pejorative when I employs it welcomed my arms wide open. I also met people who worked, for example, for the creation of the Maison de la Photo in the heart of Villeneuve. I am thinking here of the late Michel Heuillet without whom nothing would have happened …”
From Peyrusse-le-Roc to Laguiole via Rodez
It will be understood, “his” Aveyron is mainly in Villeneuve where memories are piled up, even if they are not all very good, especially when his farm caught fire. “The only positive point is that I was able to rebuild it with a little more modernity!” When we push the Aveyron question a little more, he evokes the majestic setting of Peyrusse-le-Roc and his towers placed on the Roc del Thaluc, without forgetting the restaurant installed in the village, a nod to the (good) departmental gastronomy. On this subject, he of course praises the “talent” From Michel and Sébastien Bras, in Laguiole. In another field, but it is still art, “The museum dedicated to Pierre Soulages, Rodez, a modern building; if I dare and dare, this unusual side in Aveyron between the black of Soulages and the colors of Périer”.
Inevitably, you never move away from Villeneuve a lot. Because, here, from 1995, there was an image there, the name, he already had it for him. It was thus possible to touch a “celebrity” – he defended himself from him who had, above all, “chance“this lucky teenager to whom we put a camera in our hands to immortalize the Dizzy Gillepsie, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones before binding friends with the Johnny Hallyday, Jacques Dutronc … – for which this project of the Maison de la Photo took shape, in 2015, in the Place des Conques, in a building of the 13th and 14th centuries. “Visitors quickly flocked, which gave a good tourist momentum in Villeneuve “explains the octogenarian (he has just breathed his 85 candles). “”With the new mayor of the town, Jean-Pierre Masbou, the Maison de la Photo has become the Jean-Marie Périer gallery. The 200 images hung on the picture rails now have my voice, which allows an explanatory touch.“
Far from retirement – a word of which he does not know the meaning! -, Jean-Marie Périer now spends less time in Villeneuve-he still has three books to write whose stories are already well established in his mind-, but he still needs to take south from Paris, just to see “normal people“.