La France romane de Zodiaque
As I explained before, for three weeks now I have been, if not bedridden, at least mostly housebound as a result of a crippling knee problem. I can still drive around and run errands when mandatory, but it is hurtful and I am definitely not up to lugging photo equipment and go shooting. Furthermore, when this struck, I didn’t have many photos waiting for upload, what with the Winter season coming to an end, the pandemic still with us that doesn’t really encourage outings (the one day I went out, on March 9, on a photo shoot for the Fondation pour la Sauvegarde de l’Art Français, I became a COVID contact case of someone I had brushed against during the day, luckily without any consequence as I never was infected)... not to mention ridiculous wartime gas prices!
The bottom line is, I simply ran out of stuff to upload...
So, I had the idea to turn to some older photographs of mine to which I had, in 2021, given a “new life” by creating black-and-white versions of them for the purpose of a photographic essay that had been requested from me by the Department of Mediæval Studies of a US university. The essay’s theme was the emulation, with the tools of today, of the gorgeous black-and-white photography found in the books of the Zodiaque collection La Nuit des temps, devoted to religious art and architecture of the Romanesque age in Europe, and in particular in France. I’m sure many of you have heard about those books and/or own some of them.
Anyway, since those black-and-white versions are available, I figured I might as well upload them to offer you, who are kind enough to follow my stream, something to look at while I recover and until I can resume more normal photo activities...
Thank you in advance for your patience, and I hope you will enjoy this “renewed” content à la Zodiaque! I will put in a short description of each photo below.
As I have titled this series in reference to the Zodiaque books, I construe my “Romanesque” as the good monks did, i.e., I include in it some fine and inspiring examples of older architecture, what would indeed be classified as pre-Romanesque.
Among such places is the so-called “Lémenc Rotunda”, in the crypt (not open to the public) under the Saint-Pierre-de-Lémenc church in the town of Chambéry, at the foot of the French Alps. This enigmatic structure has been diversely interpreted by cohorts of self-styled specialists and self-appointed experts, and no definitive conclusion has been reached as to its purpose —which may have varied as centuries rolled by.
It is almost undoubtedly from the Carolingian period at least, therefore around 800–900 CE, possibly even Merovingian, i.e. a couple of centuries older. The structure is harmonious and delicate, and the existence of a drain at the bottom of the small basin reveals that a liquid was regularly poured into it, that subsequently needed to be drained. The idea of a baptismal font springs to mind, and most likely this was one of the place’s uses... but why did it need to be underground, hidden away in a crypt? Maybe because it wasn’t a baptismal font to begin with, and that’s when you step into the realm of conjecture, speculation and worse...
La France romane de Zodiaque
As I explained before, for three weeks now I have been, if not bedridden, at least mostly housebound as a result of a crippling knee problem. I can still drive around and run errands when mandatory, but it is hurtful and I am definitely not up to lugging photo equipment and go shooting. Furthermore, when this struck, I didn’t have many photos waiting for upload, what with the Winter season coming to an end, the pandemic still with us that doesn’t really encourage outings (the one day I went out, on March 9, on a photo shoot for the Fondation pour la Sauvegarde de l’Art Français, I became a COVID contact case of someone I had brushed against during the day, luckily without any consequence as I never was infected)... not to mention ridiculous wartime gas prices!
The bottom line is, I simply ran out of stuff to upload...
So, I had the idea to turn to some older photographs of mine to which I had, in 2021, given a “new life” by creating black-and-white versions of them for the purpose of a photographic essay that had been requested from me by the Department of Mediæval Studies of a US university. The essay’s theme was the emulation, with the tools of today, of the gorgeous black-and-white photography found in the books of the Zodiaque collection La Nuit des temps, devoted to religious art and architecture of the Romanesque age in Europe, and in particular in France. I’m sure many of you have heard about those books and/or own some of them.
Anyway, since those black-and-white versions are available, I figured I might as well upload them to offer you, who are kind enough to follow my stream, something to look at while I recover and until I can resume more normal photo activities...
Thank you in advance for your patience, and I hope you will enjoy this “renewed” content à la Zodiaque! I will put in a short description of each photo below.
As I have titled this series in reference to the Zodiaque books, I construe my “Romanesque” as the good monks did, i.e., I include in it some fine and inspiring examples of older architecture, what would indeed be classified as pre-Romanesque.
Among such places is the so-called “Lémenc Rotunda”, in the crypt (not open to the public) under the Saint-Pierre-de-Lémenc church in the town of Chambéry, at the foot of the French Alps. This enigmatic structure has been diversely interpreted by cohorts of self-styled specialists and self-appointed experts, and no definitive conclusion has been reached as to its purpose —which may have varied as centuries rolled by.
It is almost undoubtedly from the Carolingian period at least, therefore around 800–900 CE, possibly even Merovingian, i.e. a couple of centuries older. The structure is harmonious and delicate, and the existence of a drain at the bottom of the small basin reveals that a liquid was regularly poured into it, that subsequently needed to be drained. The idea of a baptismal font springs to mind, and most likely this was one of the place’s uses... but why did it need to be underground, hidden away in a crypt? Maybe because it wasn’t a baptismal font to begin with, and that’s when you step into the realm of conjecture, speculation and worse...