After its exhibition at the Rouen Normandy Photographic Centre in 2017 and then in 2018 at the Abbaye aux Dames in Caen, the Normandy exhibition returns to focus this time on the Cotentin peninsula.

From the Seine-Maritime to the Manche, the English photographer Simon Roberts travelled the region in search of outdoor leisure time. The photographic commission, placed by the Rouen Normandy Photographic Centre, was carried out between 2014 and 2016; the context was quite different then. The exhibition proposed at the Château de Flamanville is an opportunity to (re)discover this photographic ensemble in the light of the last few months of confinement and the radical changes that have taken place in our social practices. It is also an opportunity to extend the commission in the Manche region, with the photographer coming to Flamanville and the surrounding area during the month of July. The pictures he will take will then be added to the current exhibition.

Simon Roberts surveyed local festivals, parades, commemorations and garage sales. When everything is movement, flux, mobility, he stops. Camped on the roof of his van, or perched on the top of a ladder, he composes vast photographic tableaux, like so many stories of encounters between an environment and its occupants for a day.

As a counterpoint to these vast contemporary landscapes, extracts of amateur films from the collections of Normandie Images, made between the 1920s and 1960s, old postcards as well as a few reproductions from the Gain collection and the Victor Lefrançois collection of the Archives départementales de la Manche are also presented. All these archive documents will add a vernacular, historical and intimate touch to the picture of the region sketched out in this exhibition.

Flamanville Castle
Every day from 10.30am to 12pm and from 2pm to 7pm
1, rue du Château – 50 340 Flamanville
Contact: Mairie de Flamanville
T. 02 33 87 66 66 / communication@flamanville.fr