Aveyron, le temps de la terre, 1950-1960

How much has our society changed over the last decades? As the old saying goes, a few mages say a lot more than a thousand words. It is the feeling one gets when leafing through the production of a photographer now forgotten (Jean Ribière, active at Paris-Match and at L’Aurore in the 1950-70) in a French “département” hardly visited, the Aveyron (known by the French especially for its Roquefort cheese and for supplying Paris with half of its café owners). There are public criers, who may even have lost a hand; on the markets we see stands of vendors of ropes and saddlers; in the quarry of Cantoin, stone breakers still work basalt. Men still put a watch in their vest pocket, women wrap up their hair in buns, all alike use an apron when working, chicken are weighed with a Roman scale. Everyone uses wooden clogs, carts are used to travel and the dust is removed from tabletops with duck wings. These photos are not fifty years old, and yet they show us a world that seems close to archaeological science. Post it right away on Facebook and Twitter…

• Aveyron, le temps de la terre, 1950-1960, by Marie-Claude Dupin-Valaison and Hélène Tabès, photographs by Jean Ribière, Editions du Rouergue, 2012, 162 p., €25.