"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.