Photography exhibition: Faces of the Rhone

Photography exhibition: Faces of the Rhone – the river king

The Luxembourg Garden in Paris is open to the public during the third Coronavirus pandemic lockdown. The French Senate, situated in the Luxembourg Gardens, holds regular photography exhibitions on the grilled fence around the gardens.

The latest photography exhibition is called ‘Faces of the Rhone – the river king’ from 13 March to 14 August 2021. All photographs are of the Rhone river in France, taken by photographer Camille Moirenc.

The Rhone river is king because it has a high flow that makes it the most powerful river in France. It begins from a glacier in the Urana Alps, at high altitude, and runs to the Carmargue Delta. It crosses Northern Europe and the Mediterranean. The Greeks used the Rhone for trade and Hannibal fought the Roman legions along it. It is still a shipping route, a source of energy and water for the cities and fields surrounding it.

However, the 55 million-year-old Rhone could lose up to 40% of water by 2050, and with it, its fauna and flora, tourism, and residents, maintains Gérard Larcher, the Speaker of the Senate.

Forty-five-year-old photographer Camille Moirencwas born in Bouches-du-Rhône. Through these photographs, he says he has sharpened his eyes ‘on water, industry, heritage, seasons, traditions, the world’ over a period of 15 years.

Moirenc, who lives along the river,photographed the Rhone in all its forms and seasons, viewing the river by bike, canoe, barge, and in the air, from the Glacier to the Mediterranean.He says he has gained a form of respect for it and what it represents: ‘Its water resource motivated me to become a committed photographer.’

MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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