THE PASTORAL ODYSSEY...

" In an autobiographical and reflexive quest, I was moved to explore atask that was the once my father's and my grandfather's, but will neverbe mine. It is not a simple quest for roots but a semi-ethnographicexploration of the mentioned event vanishing little by little: the shepherd's world. "

A PHOTO STORY BY LIONEL ROUX/LIGHMEDIATION

2724-37: the wool route, Italy, Piemont, Gathering the herd before shearing.

Contact - Thierry Tinacci - LightMediation Photo Agency +33 (0)6 61 80 57 21 email: thierry@lightmediation.com

2724-01: Spain, shepherd and his herd moving across Madrid's suburbs. 2724-02: Spain, Reitiro Park, shepherd and his herd moving thru Madrid's suburbs.

2724-03: Spain, Reitiro Park, shepherd and his herd moving thru Madrid's suburbs. 2724-04: Spain, shepherd and his herd moving thru central Madrid.

2724-01: Spain, shepherd and his herd moving across Madrid's suburbs.

2724-05: Spain, Puerta del Sol, shepherd and his herd moving thru central Madrid. 2724-06: Spain, Castille, shepherd and his herd moving thru the countryside, lunch in the sierra.

2724-07: Spain,Castille, great migragtion sheep moving thru the countryside, stopped at the edge of acliff.

2724-08: Spain, Castille,soccer field after the passing of the herd.

2724-10: Ethiopia, young Kereyu sheperd with his rifle, where it can be necessary to defend his herd with his life against robbers and hyenas.

2724-09: Spain, Castille, shepherd and his herd two thousand five hundred head moving thru thecountryside.

2724-10: Ethiopia, young Kereyu sheperd with his rifle, where it can be necessary to defend his herd withhis life against robbers and hyenas.

2724-11: Ethiopia, Assembley of Kereyu sheperds, ritual dance. 2724-12: Ethiopia, Kereyu shepards in route to the traditional assembley each eight years.

2724-07: Spain,Castille, great migragtion sheep moving thru the countryside, stopped at the edge of a cliff.

2724-13: Ethiopia, Kereyu sheperds in route to the traditional assembley. 2724-14: France, Briançonnet region, sheperd and his flock.

2724-15: France, south alps, Allos lake, sheperd and his dog. 2724-16: France, Ossau Valley, Ram coming dowm from the Ossau mountains in autumn. Seeds fromalpine plants attach to the wool and migrate with the herd to the valley below.

2724-30: Romania, Transylvania, shepherd in his coat.

2724-17: France, Provence, sheperd loading his flock onto a truck for the four hour trip into Provence, ajourney which took fifteen days on foot in the 1970's.

2724-18: France, Alps, Briançonnet region, sheperd and his flock during the siesta.

2724-19: 2724-19: France, Briançonnet region, sheperd trimming the hooves to treat an infection .

2724-38: the wool route, France, Corsica, Gathering the herd before shearing.

2724-20: France, Crau plain, large herd crossing the last steppe in Europe. 2724-21: France, Provence, Arles, troupeau en perpherie de la ville. France, Provence, city of Arles, largeherd crossing the fields around the city.

2724-22: France, Crau plain, the last steppe in Europe, flock being herded into a barn. 2724-23: Greece, Meteora, flock being herded into a barn.

2724-43: France, Corsica, shearing season. Sheep stressed by shearing trying to hide in a mound of wool.

2724-24: Greece, Pindos, Shepherd 2724-25: Greece, Crete, milking.

2724-26: Greece, Meteora, shearing . 2724-27: Greece, Corintos, curious goat.

2724-40: Wool route, France, Corsica, shearing season. The man who catches sheep for the shearer.

2724-28: Greece, Pindos, Shepherd 2724-29: Romania, Transylvania, barn.

2724-30: Romania, Transylvania, shepherd in his coat. 2724-31: Romania, Transylvania, young shepherd.

2724-42: France, Corsica, shearing season. Sheep stressed by shearing.

2724-32: Romania, Transylvania, shepherds cabin. 2724-33: Romania, Transylvania, favorite animal .

2724-34: Romania, Transylvania, mountain dairy, making butter. 2724-35: Romania, Transylvania, barn .

2724-02: Spain, Reitiro Park, shepherd and his herd moving thru Madrid's suburbs.

2724-36: Romania, Transylvania, shepherds . 2724-37: the wool route, Italy, Piemont, Gathering the herd before shearing.

2724-38: the wool route, France, Corsica, Gathering the herd before shearing. 2724-39: the wool route, Italy, Piemont, Gathering the herd before shearing.

2724-05: Spain, Puerta del Sol, shepherd and his herd moving thru central Madrid.

2724-40: Wool route, France, Corsica, shearing season. The man who catches sheep for the shearer. 2724-41: the wool route, Corsica, shearing season. Shearer at work.

2724-42: France, Corsica, shearing season. Sheep stressed by shearing. 2724-43: France, Corsica, shearing season. Sheep stressed by shearing trying to hide in a mound of wool.

The PastoralOdyssey

Son and grandson of migratoryshepherds...

In an autobiographical and reflexive quest,I was moved to explore a task that wasthe once my father's and my grandfather's,but will never be mine. My photographicquest/inquiry draws its sources from ahistory of lines, features, limits and tracesthat constitute and mark a territoryanchored in the ancient, but extremelyfragile culture of the pastoral civilization. In the beginning, there is the coursewhere the line of family roots stretches outbetween the alpine province and thepiedmont mountains. The path (or ratherpaths) of the migratory shepherds, werethe routes that for centuries twice eachyear, brought men and herds over thelandscape. Shifts of altitude for some andshifts of attitude for others, like myshepherd father, draw a line on thisnomadic life. My artistic path, myphotographer's itinerary has beencontinually questioning the pastoralculture of the migration around theMediterranean region and even farther,ever since I was conscious of the fracturewith my rejected inheritance. It is not asimple quest for roots (of which nomadsdon't feel concerned) but asemi-ethnographic exploration of thementioned event vanishing little by little:The trace of the pastoral routes, theMediterranean and African shepherd'sworld.

The trace of the pastoral routes, the

Mediterranean and African shepherd'sworld.

In the beginning, there is the coursewhere the line of the family roots stretchesout between the alpine province and thePiémont mountains. The path (or ratherpaths) of the migratory shepherd, the tripthat for centuries was brought twice a yearby men and herds over the lands.Shifts of altitude by the ones and shifts ofattitude by my shepherd father to draw aline on this nomad life. A break in the longlasting line of journeys, the change ofheading that announced other changesand the end of a way of life.A segmented concept came after an openconcept, the one of the migratoryshepherds. Along the way my fatherlearned to build walls. From being ashepherd he became a bricklayer.

My artistic path, my photographer'sitinerary has been continuallyquestionning the pastoral culture of themigration around the mediterranean areaand even farther, ever since I wasconscious of the fracture by my rejectedinheritance.It is not a simple quest for roots ( of whichnomads don't feel concerned ) but asemi-etnographic exploration of thementioned event vanishing little by little :The trace of the pastoral routes, themediterranean shepherd's world.

The sheperd, a fluid man

The shepherd is, for Jean Blanc (migratoryshepherd, pioneer of ecomuseums andnatural regional parks) "a rare and wellplaced man that worthy to be visited".If we can't really share the shepherd'slifestyle, at least we are being tempted byhis space, his territory free of time rather

than constraining as our's.The modern shepherd, mobile bydefinition, finds trouble in finding his placein our society's rules and the day to daylife.Nevertheless, we park our car to let himpass with his herd and travelers try to gethis attention, just an esxcuse to accoasthim. When shepherd , dogs and sheepshave been passed in review, our strollersleave the pastures right away.Filled with a delighted complicity, they arepositive of having experienced again witha rustical universe that they thought lost.Each one goes back to its world with theself created image of the other's. In thisway, each one has seen, alternated, orspoken with a shepherd. But what if weflip the tendency ? What image does theshepherd have about his environment andabout the society who uses him as asymbol of liberty and independence ?

Sensitive Roads

"The migratory pastoralism (that for itsmobile character seems to escape everysingle social rule) seems to be an idealantithesis to urban values, a kind ofsociological island lost across the bigcontinent of the global society in which welive. A lost paradise where the actors andtheir knowledge, still alive and moving,already have the fascinating beauty ofdeath." (Guillaume Lebaudy, mirror of thePastoral migration, conference, 2004).The shepherd is an actor in his city in spiteof himself and because of it to it. He oftenfinds himself facing an imposed urbanscenery.Historically we have found ourselves infront of a cleavage of the consciousnessof being in the world: On one side, theoriginal nomad for which the journey, theorientation of the human being is essential; on the other hand, the sedentary for

which subject and object are the mainpoint which moves toward a specificlocation. Lifeless what characterizing thetownsman, sedentary and urban, opposethe nomad warrior.(Paul Virilio, speed offreedom, 1995)

Boundary line

"I keep myself by the line", tell me theshepherds to explain me they remain insummer in the French-Italian border. Thesheperds of my childhood forced me tolook toward the sides of mount Genèvre,looking for the trace that I might still belooking for.Turned into entrepreneur of constructionand of course sedentary, my father keepme away from the pastoral roads that tookhim from Provence to Piémont. Once hesaid : "You will do and be whatever youwant, except Shepherd".His command accelerated my curiosity. Itmade me understand that I was safe andgood in the limit of a world in which I wasforbidden to enter, and a world ofenormous possibilities to explore. It's thisposition between two universes thatallowed me to walk alongside and to drawmy own line. By means of obtainingvarious resources, I was able to travel allover the Mediterranean region beyond thepath of the european shepherds.On these trips, I accomplished a verypersonal photographic report and at thesame time, universal, A mixture of facesand scenarios, roads and territories.These photos place and show my ownhistory as an itinerant photographer. Arethe shepherds and their herds arriving tothe limits of the suburbs that pushed me totake and perceive the city as a strugglingentity in a permanent osmosis with it'srural environment. To look closer into theconflict and the changes in the context ofthe urban and consuming hegemony in

which the countryside gives space.I noticed in my photographic journeys, thebreaking points between the rural andurban universe that fascinated me in theirarrangement, their geometry and theiralternative and precarious balance.How to find a fair point of view. How to beat the right point to see these stratums ofspaces sit astride, opposing or evading inthese zones of "No development territory"?Following the roads of migratoryshepherds where the herds touch andsometime cross (often by night) the cities,I am in the quest of these underlayingboundaries that emerge in the contact oftwo living forms. Never fully closedboundaries, contact and exchange pointsrather than break points in the territory ofdifferent and contracted universes as thecity and the country are.

Cultural, never natural, landscape

To sum up, who can tell the sense of thesurrounding world, and who can even sayif it is necessary to tell it?Maybe the shepherd !But what a big responsability it is to definethe meaning of an habitable world, bytracks, movements and the leading of theherd.Alain Roger recalls "A landscape as anaesthetic object, is never natural, butalways cultural" (Landscape andenvironment, a disassociated theory,1994).If the shepherd is the most fluid of theelements of the reality, he also is the mosttransitory, the least permanent, theblurriest. This man exists only by the

movement. It is this fluidity, this dynamismthat allows him to affirm his hold over theherd in which he assures an action tocontinue the domestication.

Pastoral Architecture

To speak about domestication, it isnecessary to speak about Domus, thehouse of the alienated herd, this summerroman house, this point not only fixed butalso spinning that turns the shepherd intoa seminomad that moves away from thewarrior figure and gets closer once againto the movement phenomenon....The pastoral migration, this humancreation, of ones cultural expression iserected on the landscape of anorganization under the reason ofexploiting an already laboured territory,moulded by the projects man does aroundit.My photography project observes this willof moulding the territory, of showing itthrough the pastoral movements. I havelearnt not to be shocked by the ruralworld, never to take this universe as aproduction of spectacular gesture.One scythed harvest, the threshing ofwheat, are events tied to a temporalspace, a season. A peasant gets hiswheat with a scythe, and then what ?I will be tempted to say then, that a greatamount of the agricultural humanityproceeds this way.The aesthetic substance of my research isnot there. It is in the invention of anotherreality, of another distance with the object,the gesture , the action, the season. It isthe research for a new method ofinventory of photographic impressionsfacing man and his movements in space,in the relation with objects, with animals.I force myself to avoid the spectacular, tolet the light invade the void of my film. My

photographic project has, as a purpose, tochange this reducing view of thelandscape.It is mandatory then to admit, that the ruralspace has entered to the urban move witha new sort of strength and consequentlywe find it near the wide network ofcrossroads to the city. The pastoralitinerary has become my expertise domain, as itinerant photographer, I strolledaround Europe in a boundless way, onlycoming back to France to get thenecessary, to leave again in the quest foreuropean shepherds.The word nomad brings on space andmovement. Seminomads as defined bythe ethnologists... It is today a noltalgia fornomadism; a desire for space andmovement.The research for new ways of deployingthe energy of the being, out from thealready used dialectics and the codedinscriptions.Civilizations are mortal, we say, and whois able to deny it? Their end is alreadystated from the moment of theirconception. Nomadism bonded to spacerather than time, or history, will it escapethis fatality...For sure, history absorbs everything, andcivilizations have absorbed their nomadneighbours. But is it possible that anintellectual... nomadism subsists ? Am Ithe derived subject of this humanexperience? My quest does not come bythe fact that I feel left on the road side.Have I missed the passage of pastoralmigration? Shepherds are usually,especially the migratory ones, thecompromise of this state of fact, the lastmutation before the dissolution of thispractice.The linked blending in one no-nomadsociety, a society that excludes wanderingfor moving and circulation totalizes theproperties and the people. I force myself

to study this speed differential all along mysix months stay.