L’Ardennais. Photographs by Edmond Dauchot

*L’Ardennais*. Photographs by Edmond Dauchot

by Albert Moxhet

Step into the everyday life of the Ardennes of yesteryear (homes, villages, fields, rivers and woods…) through 226 period photographs.

What characterised the lives of the people of the Ardennes, right up until the 1950s, was the hold that a sovereign natural world – at once a companion and a provider, wild and hostile – exerted over their destinies. It held sway over every aspect of their lives: their homes, villages, meadows and fields, rivers and woods. This is the central theme of this book, which seeks to shed an ethnologist’s light on this bygone era.

The text was entrusted to an expert on the Ardennes: Albert Moxhet. As for the images, the perspective is that of Edmond Dauchot, the great photographer who knew how to see and portray the Ardennes of yesteryear in all their unique authenticity.

The Piconrue – Musée de la Grande Ardenne is now the custodian of Dauchot’s entire body of work: over 18,000 negatives. It is from this extraordinary treasure trove that he has drawn the illustrations for this book – photographs, many of which have never been published before, which combine visual beauty with the power of authentic documentation. But the images cannot tell the whole story. Here, they resonate with the commentary of a writer, Albert Moxhet, a connoisseur of traditional Ardennes life, who elucidates and enriches Dauchot’s extensive photographic investigation.