We thought we would invite the photographer Sylvain Gouraud for an artistic residency at the Lycée Agricole Gilbert Martin in Le Neubourg, in the Eure.

The school year: months ahead of us. He would work there, with the students, on “the beautiful work”, that of the earth. We would invite them to talk about beautiful machines and good food; together we would learn to read landscapes in reverse – head down, field up – to write words and photographs, to take pictures.

A desire for hybridization emerged, a sketch of a menu: banana ripened on a workbench, eggplant on a tractor bed, asparagus on a car body. Dishes that we thought we would cook collectively, but that was before a few announcements of confinement, deconfinement and many other “buts”. The workshop gave way to the screen. Everyone was settling back in.

The exhibition and the journal published simultaneously testify to a year of residency of the photographer Sylvain Gouraud, accompanied by the writer Philippe Ripoll, in the heart of the high school: from workshops in presence to those conducted at a distance, from aspirations to surprises, from images to words, and vice versa…

The artistic residency “Beau Travail” is the second part of the Alter-Echos Triptych led by the Gilbert Martin Agricultural High School and the Rouen Normandy Photographic Center. It is financed by the region of Normandy and the Direction régionale des affaires culturelles de Normandie. The Alter-Echos triptych has also received the support of the Direction régionale de l’alimentation, de l’agriculture et de la forêt de Normandie, the city of Le Neubourg and the CAUE 27.