The word authenticity comes to mind when I think of the photographs by Alain Laboile. There are lots of other words to describe his intimate and truthful study of family as he elevates the ordinary. A frenetic freedom and joy permeates his photographs, photographs that feel like movie stills where the action can only be studied in stop motion. Living in a small village in the southwest of France, his six children allow him to be a participant observer of every day life. Alain has just released a new book, Summer of the Fawn, published by Kerher Verlag, “it is a beautiful, vivacious, and at the same time melancholic ode to childhood and life.”
Wrought-iron craftsman, photographer and father to six children, Alain Laboile started a family album in 2007, at the age of 39. His“La Famille”series was, at first, a private treasure. This self-taught photographer who only possesses one picture of his own childhood simply wished to record the passing of time with his family.
The family album quickly goes beyond the private setting and seduces the web. Tens of thousands of internet users all over the world await, daily, the new images of this French“tribe” insolently living on the edge of the world. In December 2012, the New York Times celebrates Alain Laboile’s talent. The first exhibitions ensue in Japan and the United States, then in France in 2014 when the“La Famille”series joined the Musée français de la photographie collection .
Alain Laboile’s work was since exhibited worldwide and published several times.
Summer of the Fawn
I live in rural France, near Bordeaux. Sculptor by trade and father of six, I have documented the life of my big family on a daily basis since 2006. My work depicts the sweet madness of childhood, the intrinsic relations of siblings and their close interaction with nature. These little snapshots of simple life are a day-to-day chronicle of living together. Our daily life is a sweet quietude, but also a bubbling, a permanent emulation in which each individual, rich in his own identity, helps to preserve the balance of the family nucleus. Homeschooled, our children live the most relaxed life ever, freed from educational dictates.
