Antebellum

.WARNING : We are offering only the French version of this book. An English version will be released by University of Texas Press, but - to our knowledge - it will not be available for distribution outside of the United States.

Presentation on the French publisher's website lamaindonne:

"Antebellum South: of this appellation which designates the Deep South of the United States, usage has retained its now common meaning, not to say reactionary: that of the rejection of modernity.

When I settled there in 1972, and throughout the years that followed, during which, alone or with my wife, I traveled to the bone, this aspiration of the Old South to erase the present era fascinated me. I planted with pleasure and obstinacy all my fantasies: sensual, musical, literary, photographic ...

Beyond the frozen words, often hurtful, and their turpitude, did I become a "southerner", in other words, "backward-looking"? I have always run after time, seizing every good occasion to erase it, to make forget to what abyss it precipitates us. Antebellum, like so many haunted domains ...

        --  Gilles Mora  "

Presentation on University of Texas Press' website :

"In 1972, Gilles Mora and his wife Françoise left France to teach the French language in public schools in Louisiana. At the time, he knew nothing about photography. Fascinated by the Deep South, however, Mora soon started a photographic project on its culture.

Greatly influenced by artists such as Walker Evans, Ben Shahn, Eudora Welty, and Clarence John Laughlin; playing music with some of the major figures of the rockabilly scene, including Carl Perkins; and infused with the sensuality of the South, Mora produced a unique body of pictures over more than twenty years.

Rarely exhibited or published, the images in Antebellum present a kind of travelogue, a photographic recording of Mora’s personal mythologies, which evoke the disappearing world of the Deep South."

176 pages - Hardcover

lamaindonne, 2016

Format : 24 x 26 cm

New - Mint condition