{"id":6493,"date":"2019-04-29T15:24:12","date_gmt":"2019-04-29T15:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=6493"},"modified":"2019-04-30T09:32:20","modified_gmt":"2019-04-30T09:32:20","slug":"amelies-eye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=6493","title":{"rendered":"Am\u00e9lie\u2019s Eye"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Jeudi gras\/Am\u00e9lie Galup<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m a big fan of tourist information centres, and always\nhead for the nearest one on holiday. Not that I\u2019m interested in theme parks or\nopportunities for white-water rafting; I\u2019m on the lookout for quirky little\nmuseums, unknown artists, local musical soir\u00e9es \u2013 and who knows, maybe even\ndames. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I hit the jackpot a few weeks ago in south west France. On walking into the small tourist office in St Antonin Noble Val, I was confronted with an array of fantastic photos from the turn of the last century, taken by a local woman, Am\u00e9lie Galup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She documented life in a small rural community on the Tarn\nriver with irresistible charm and immediacy, turning her lens equally on the\nbourgeoisie in their best, labourers, children, craftswomen\u2026 It\u2019s no wonder her\nimages have been used to illustrate much of the general historical information\nabout the town.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So who was the woman behind the lens? Am\u00e9lie Faure was born\nin 1856, the youngest of nine children, to a Bordeaux wine merchant. When her\nfather died, only eight years later, the whole family relocated to Paris, to\nthe home of her eldest brother. Four years after that, her mother died, an\nevent that hit the 12-year-old Am\u00e9lie hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She is likely to have spent the tempestuous period of the\nParis Commune in the safety of Bordeaux, but we know that in 1874 she returned\nto Paris, again to the house of her older brother. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He now took it upon himself to get her married off, just as he had done with her four older sisters. But Am\u00e9lie was having none of it. Not that she protested, resisted or argued. No \u2013 by the simple expedient of turning up to her engagement dinner with her hair cropped short she effectively scuppered her brother\u2019s mission. Three years later, after some discreet enquiries and introductions orchestrated by her sister in Nantes, she found a suitor more to her liking and married Albert Galup, a judge in Cahors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he was appointed to the court in Albi, the family (they\nhad a son and a daughter by now) moved to the area and she set herself up with\na darkroom. In the six years that followed, from 1895 to 1901, she took over\n1,300 photos. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the death of her husband she returned to Paris and\nfrom then on her photography was confined to family portraits. She also made\nthe switch from glass plates to celluloid, and these later images have been\nlost. It was only in 1984, over forty years after her death in 1943, that there\nwas a public exhibition of her photos, in the town hall at St Antonin Noble\nVal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Rag market\/Am\u00e9lie Galup<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

But what a range she covered in her years in south west France!\nSome photos are artless shots of the passing scene, of people engrossed in\ntheir activities, where she seems to have managed to fade into the background.\nOthers are obviously staged, such as the one of the three little chefs with\nattitude, skillets at the ready for Pancake Day. One Claude Harmelle has\nwritten a very perceptive essay on her output in the booklet of her work on\nsale in the tourist office, and in the course of his research back in the 1980s\nmanaged to talk to some her of sitters. These very senior citizens recalled\nthat, as fidgety children, they had found her lengthy setting up of such tableaux\nrather trying. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Harmelle also notes that, quite unconsciously, she was\ncapturing a rapidly vanishing way of life. People were leaving the St Antonin\nNoble Val area for the city in droves, tired of struggling to make ends meet\nthrough crafts and trades whose output had been superseded by the cheaper\nfruits of industrialisation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At least, thanks to Am\u00e9lie Galup, their lives, their work and their leisure have not been forgotten. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

. . . she documented a rapidly vanishing way of life. . . <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6499,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[73,2,58,182,53,64],"tags":[197,198],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6493"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6493"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6529,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6493\/revisions\/6529"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}