Lost Gardens Of Chateau Voltaire-overview

Les Jardins Perdus de Chateau Voltaire - Overview

To recent Exhibitions page

One day in autumn of 2010 I visited gardens of the Château Voltaire in Ferney-Voltaire. The weather was windy and overcast. There was almost no one in the gardens, which had a pensive air of bygone days and forlorn emptiness. They were beautiful, but more a park now than the gardens that Voltaire had lovingly maintained in his day; the pools and ponds empty, with leaves showering on them rather than fountains.

Such an atmospheric occasion, in the evocative surroundings of the Château, cried out for someone to record this visual poetry. So I and my camera did just that.

I intend that these photographs, in black and white, would evoke the poetic sense of a time lost, of the gardens now bereft of their former splendour but still hauntingly lovely.

I was graciously allowed to exhibit these images in the Château de Voltaire itself in October 2011. I was pleased that I could show these black and white images of the gardens, inside the Château itself, so that the visitors could have the piquancy of glimpses of the actual gardens through the windows whilst simultaneously viewing my evocation of them. The Château is a "monument national de France" and will be undergoing renovations of the gardens in the near future so I was honoured to be assured, at the opening of the exhibition, that these photos are seen as a valuable documentation of the Château gardens at that period.