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This
photo is a marriage between the traditional photo technique and the
digital version.
Details of the technique used in taking this photo can be
found in Issue No. 15 (July/August 1999) of Photographe
Amateur Magazine |
Back |
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A
few years ago I photographed this very strange house, which is to be found
at St. Helene, a little town in the Gironde.
It was once the village pork-butcher’s shop.
This is the explanation I was able to gather as to its origins.
The story begins, it seems, in the nineteen-thirties.
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Mr.
A. Naturel, a pork-butcher buys a piece of land in order to build a
house for his family with a shop for his trade.
This land is much too small, but the salesman manages to
persuade him that his immediate
neighbours
are more than willing to sell him a part of their gardens. There will then be enough land so the sale is concluded.
Unfortunately,
however, these promises are broken and the extra land is not
forthcoming. Property
disputes, one court case after another, no solution is to be found and
our good pork-butcher must put up with his tiny piece of land.
Nevertheless, nothing daunted, he builds this house.
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| Naturally
he can have no garden and what the house loses in width it gains in
height.
The pork-butcher occupies the ground floor, and his family
the others. |
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The
façade is adorned with a stained-glass balcony with hunting scenes
in ceramic, crowned with the inscription “QUAND
MEME ET MEPRIS” (Translator’s
note: best rendered perhaps by “UP
YOURS”).
A decoration, which shows clearly to visitors the
determination of the owner and his opinion of his
neighbours. |
| Mr.
Naturel gets his own back ! Many years after his death, this
strange house is the most visited and most-photographed place in St.Helene |
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