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Marseille vue de chez vous

Texts

Page 1

To those who opened their doors and windows for me.

To Denis Borg, naval architect,

builder of superb boats and beautiful encounters.

To Notre-Dame de la Garde, she is everywhere in Marseille,

and all Marseille is in her.

Page 5

Marseille’s windows, opened for you

Photographing my city! Marseille is immense, diverse and secret. For me, the only possible way to visit it is a romantic stroll, taking me to symbolic but also aesthetic places. How many times has my gaze stopped on a window which I thought would open onto an original or simply a beautiful view? Every choice is made of compromises and desires. That is for the places.

But next the inhabitants! Those who accepted to open their door and share the view from their window. Everyone has a particular love for their city, neighbourhood, street, garden, which I tried to translate into image. During the few years spent taking these photos, I discovered astonishing viewpoints and interesting people. Often their gaze guided mine, offering a view even more beautiful than that I imagined from the street. The city is at once seen from the inside and the outside. In the transition zone that is the window, this dichotomy gives these photographs their power.

The book is organised around texts written by the inhabitants of Marseille that I met. Each one of them sets the colour of the following photo series.

I would like to thank all those who contributed to the success of this mad project; ‘Letting all Marseille lovers enter each other’s homes’!

Bruno Manuel

Page 6

Foreword

She is watching us! The Holy Mother emanates God’s presence. Whether one believes or not, one has to think she is watching over us. Often, one throws a furtive glance her way, to feel protected.

This book proposes an exciting exchange:

The photo taken from inside the statue, from her head, from her eyes, from her point of view, is magical because now she is the one looking at us. She is looking at us! This is what Bruno Manuel aims to achieve in his work. He is exploring the intermediary space between the intimate and the extimate. The inside of one’s home and what one sees from one’s window, balcony or garden.

This passage between the inside and the outside is at once protective and explorative. Without letting go of the past, habits and warmth of one’s home, one has access to this vision of the outside world, an opening for possible adventures. The inside is comforting and known, while the world in front of us, on the other side keeps its mystery. Who knows what is happening beneath those unknown rooves?

With the traffic, the avenue is constantly changing. This can lead us to believe that adventuring our gaze outside is only possible thanks to the reassuring safety of the inside. The space of conquest thus blends in with our lived experience.

If we delve into the realm of childhood memories, we might agree that looking from a window is often an indispensable step to autonomy, and even freedom. We cannot yet go outside alone but we can look out unaided, and this intermediary space is the door to our future adventures. At the other end of life, we can also observe. Seated in an ancient armchair, and propped up with cushions, the elderly person can see the world moving, whilst they are locked in immobility. It is perhaps regrettable that these moments of observation are not systematically proposed in retirement and care homes. But if by chance the Holy Mother is visible, the elderly can direct their eyes to her confidently, for she accompanied them throughout their lives.

In this book you will share these familiar ‘inside-outsides’. Some might resemble your own, others will surprise you. Happy stroll by Marseille’s windows! Perhaps you will pass by these places. Next time you will lift up your heads. You now know that the Virgin is watching us.

On your way!

Marcel Rufo 
Paediatric psychiatrist
Professor emeritus

Faculty of medicine of Marseille

Page 7

Legend: The city seen from Notre Dame De La Garde’s eye.

Page 8

Legend: Denis Borg’s home – Naval architect.

Page 18

Seen from my office, France’s second city is an inspiration.

History is here, as the oldest city in France was born just beneath this window.

Two steps away, the city’s heart beats around the modern infrastructure near the Old Port, where one can still perceive why Marseille was European Capital of Culture.

In the distance I can see cranes, signs of an always-moving city. The reflections on the open windows create a strong link between the city outside and this office where I meet Marseille’s people and make decisions.

The light is beautiful here, and bathes the city with a serenity which I wish for each one of its inhabitants.

Jean-Claude Gaudin, Mayor of Marseille.

Legend: From Jean-Claude Gaudin’s office – Mayor of Marseille.

Page 19
Legend: Richard Campana’s home – Painter and plastic artist.

Page 27
Legend: View from one of André Stern’s building sites – Architect.

Page 32
Legend: From Macha Makeieff’s workshop – National Theatre of Marseille – La Criée.

Page 34
Legend: From the ‘Robert Louis Dreyfus training grounds’ of the Olympique de Marseille.

Page 36
Legend: Edmond Rostand’s childhood view on the street.

Page 38
Halfway between reality and fiction, I have access to two pairs of eyes: those of Roland Marci, the character, and those of Michel Cordes, the actor. Two totally interwoven, yet perfectly distinct entities. The character, Roland, is in his neighbourhood, his cocoon. Although it is an enclosed space, the Place du Mistral, endlessly crossed by its inhabitants and those of the entire city, is his opening to the world. It’s his agora, encircled by places and beings whose lives, joys and sorrows he knows, that he lives alongside every day: they step into his bar to meet each other, confide in each other, remedy their loneliness and tend to their muted pains.

For the actor, Michel, this view is a set, destined to create a world, a place for drama and comedy, stories to be told. His reference point is the camera, with its insatiable appetite for images. One is either ‘off-camera’ or ‘in’. Here, the camera is hiding behind the door jamb, so that we might forget it. Its reflection is visible in the bar door. Even when hidden, it’s the camera that links him to this universe, justifies his presence and gives him meaning.
Michel Cordes - « Roland MARCI » Plus Belle la vie.

Page 39

Legend: ‘Roland Marci’s home’ played by Michel Cordes - Plus Belle la Vie.

Page 48
Legend: From the place where Albert Londres interviewed a tatoo removal technician in ‘Marseille Porte du Sud’ (Marseille, Door to the South).

Page 55
Legend : View from the residence of the Military Governor of Marseille.

Page 56

Saint Victor. My entire childhood is encased in this neighbourhood where my father Claude worked the Four des Navettes before me for around 25 years. My family history is there. From this window I can observe on the right the entrance of the Old Port, and the city’s modern centre being built at La Joliette. I like this diversity which shows the path my city has taken through History.

Nicolas IMBERT - Four des Navettes

Legend: Nicolas Imbert’s home - Four des Navettes.

Page 59
Legend : View from the headquarters of the CMA CGM Society.

Page 61
Legend : View from the headquarters of the Ricard Society.

Page 62

Any panoramic perspective of Marseille is voluntarily absent in the glimpse of the city visible from my window. It looks little like the sordid picture one might be tempted to paint. Although that poverty does exist, with its share of violence, drugs, dirty streets, and marginal hippies, it would be an oversimplification to only look at it with this cold objectivity. This city is heavy with 2600 years of history, it is a gate to the Orient but is also open to many other horizons and has lasted through innumerable civilisations. Therefore, it is more than any other city, a melting pot where meet all dreams of a place to be visited with closed eyes and an open imagination. Unlike others, this is a city which reveals itself only to those who take the time to discover it. It is thus a city whose soul is only revealed to those who know to look beyond appearances.

Dr Bernard Granjon – Founder and ex-president of Médecins du Monde.

Page 63
Legend: Doctor Bernard Granjon’s home – Ex-president of Médecins du Monde.

Page 73 :
Legend: From La Timone hospital where each inhabitant of Marseille has ‘lived’ for a day.

Page 80 :
Legend:  From the workshop of Daniel Boetto – Le Sérail soap factory.

Page 82

Saint-Barnabé, la Fourragère: once countryside, large properties, country houses, the main passion of Marseille’s inhabitants according to Stendhal; now the metro, roundabouts, traffic lights, buildings, nothing more nor less than the city! And yet, as it often is in the Phocaean city, you cross a gateway then another to enter your residence and you are surrounded by a magnificent park, withstanding from ancient times, a green haven in the heart of Marseille!

Catherine Faner, President of the Association « 1,2,3 Soleil » founded in Marseille in 1996 by members of Mutuelles de Provence « Pour le Sourire des Enfants Hospitalisés ou Handicapés » (Provence Health Insurances ‘To make Disabled and Hospitalised Children Smile’)

Page 83
Legend: Catherine Faner’s home – 1,2,3 Soleil.

Page 84
Legend: View from Geneviève Maillet’s office – Marseille barristers’ president – Bar association

Page 85
Legend: Marcel Pagnol’s ‘home’ at La Buzine Castle (Le Château de ma mère)

Page 92
Legend: From Patrick François’ office, CEO of Shark – Motorcycle helmets.

Page 95
Legend: From Alexandra Oppenheim-Delauze’s office – CEO of COMEX.

Page 96

Peace and quiet, two steps from the heart of France’s second city and the Corniche beaches! I’m always overcome by the same happy emotion each time I return from my numerous meetings and the Parisian hysteria! Looking at this view, one is struck by the light, but one must also imagine the smells of jasmine, the croaking of the frogs in the spring, the cicadas in the summer and the noise of rainstorms in the winter! Throughout the seasons it never tires me! This is the place I work, I imagine my research projects and write my activist speeches. This is the room where I receive friends to share good times. And it is of course the place where I share my life with my dear, sweet spouse, my Michel. I wouldn’t want leave for anything in the world!

Dr Bruno Spire, researcher, activist and ex-president of the association AIDES.

Legend: Bruno Spire’s home – doctor, researcher and ex-president of AIDES.

Page 98
Legend: From Degaby Island.

Page 101
Legend: Pape Diouf’s home – Ex-president of the O.M.

Page 105
Legend: Emmanuel Mouret’s home - cinematographer.

Page 106
Legend: From the office of Marseille Mazargue Canoë Kayak 
Single canoes (C1) Olympic champion, Denis Gargaud-Chanut’s club.

Page 108
A rectangle, a big painting, with a dominating blue background, spots of colour and many moving colours gliding or dancing on the blue background. The line of a hill delineating the city in the sky, the line of the coast separating land and sea. A double page of the book of my life opens in front of me. Time has gone by since the discovery that turned my life upside down, and the lives of tens, hundreds, thousands of enthusiasts searching for the impossible: standing up and gliding across the water, propelled by the wind. Emotion, pleasure and intense sensations penetrate your body. The windsurfer is here, the first board with a sail invented by two American geniuses in the sixties. I brought this new sport to France, helped by the passion of some wishbone diehards, who went on to claim glorious titles all around the world. I want to thank them, and those who shared this spirit of liberty and fraternity with our clubs, and along the coasts of the world. Some time later, the most extreme sail board had become the ‘funboard’. It then transformed, the float becoming lighter. Attached by invisible strings to the sail, which is now rounder and shaped like a crescent moon, the surfer balances, glides and plays with the sea. This is the ‘kitesurf’, and reminds me that those two American geniuses, before inventing windsurfing, had tried without success to pull a water-skier along using a kite!

Charles Daher

Founder of Pacific Palissades Marseille Pointe Rouge Club.

Page 109
Legend: From Charles Daher’s Pacific Palissades Club.

Page 112
Legend: From head fisherman Louis Di Trento’s trawler.

Page 115
Legend: From Marseille Nautical Society (founded in 1862!)

Page 119
Legend: From the Cercle des Nageurs de Marseille (Circle of Marseille’s Swimmers) – Club of numerous world and Olympic champions.

Page 120
‘What if you took the photo from my childhood bedroom? From there you can see many of the city’s monuments, but especially the courthouse. I used to count its square windows as I went to sleep.’ *

‘Have you noticed the big tree at the top of the hill? It’s beautiful, isn’t it? When one has the fortune to live here, what more can one ask for in life?’ **

‘Stepping into this apartment, all my prejudices about the neighbourhood flew away, swept away by the view which spans the whole city, right to the summits of the Calanques.’***

‘It’s so beautiful. I like to sit on this terrace to peel vegetables whilst dreaming.’****

‘Student life in Marseille? Living in Luminy at the gate of the Calanques is like a dream!’ *****

Words noted during the photoshoots.

Page 138
Legend: From Bertrand Bigay’s office - P Factory.

Page 144

Our Holy Mother’s gaze reaches far. What a joy that this book opens with her maternal eyes. She encourages us to look towards ever wider horizons of human fraternity. This fraternal horizon begins by opening our shutters (both those of our windows and of our hearts) and looking at those around us caringly. I knew a very wise priest from Marseille, father Jean Arnaud, who had a lovely habit. While opening his shutters every morning, he would pray for the first person he saw in the street. He would then carry that person in his heart throughout the day. Thanks to Bruno Manuel for encouraging us through the beauty of his photographs to open our eyes to benevolence and hospitality, to come together in the spirit of our Holy Mother.

Father Olivier Spinosa

Rector of the Notre Dame de la Garde sanctuary.

Behind these golden glass doors is the surprising Saint Nicolas de Myre church, the first Melkite Greek Catholic church in the world, built in 1821. It was constructed for the ‘Egyptian’ community, which came to Marseille after Napoleon Bonaparte’s campaign in Egypt. Full of magnificent treasures, this church is a bridge between Orient and Occident. Masses are celebrated in French, Greek and Arab.

Without doubt, this follows the dynamic of ‘Marseille Espérance’ (Marseille Hope), created in 1990. In a time of questioning the state of peaceful coexistence in our country, the founders of ‘Marseille Espérance’, predicting a return of the religious in public spaces, decided to unite. They created this particular structure, uniting religious leaders with the mayor: Catholic, Armenian, Protestant, Orthodox, Muslim, Jewish and Buddhist along with their representatives.

Page 146
Legend (gauche): From Abdessalem Souiki’s office - Imam and theologist.

Legend (droite): From Monseigneur Georges Pontier’s office – Archbishop of Marseille and president of the Conference of French Bishops.

Page 147
Legend: From the Israeli Consistory of Marseille, office of the Chief Rabbi
Rav Reouven Ohana.

Page 148 : Conclusion.

Page 150
Legend : View from Sporting Club Corniche – ‘Les Dauphins.’

Page 154:

AFTERWORD

FROM THE VIEWPOINT

Have you ever noticed, during a round trip by car or train, that it only takes going the other way for the scenery to look completely different? ‘I could almost believe it was a different road’, I have remarked to myself many times before I did to you just now. It is nonetheless the very same road… but no longer the same scenery. In the same way a valley can look completely different depending on which side is the mountain we are observing it from: it is still the same valley, but the panorama under our eyes is hardly recognisable, it only took reversing it to make it so… And at the summit of said mountain, you only need to turn around like a spinning top to see flashing by as many different viewpoints as possible… without moving one centimetre! And whichever side you chose to climb to access the summit, you actually climbed the other side of the mountain. There is always a village on the other side of the mountain, for whose inhabitants it is you that lives on the other side of the mountain.

And even though mountains don’t move, at least not fast enough for a few thousand human lives in succession to notice, there will always be as many viewpoints of our mountain as there are pairs of eyes to look at it… We can thus imagine millions of mountains, as Bruno Manuel gives us a million Marseilles to imagine! As many Marseilles as there are eyes to look at it through their windows… It’s this incredible experience which gives the project its full worth: we think we know Marseille by heart, having crossed it in every possible direction, yet we rediscover page by page our city as we have never seen it before! With the gaze of someone else. From another point of view… And suddenly the old Phocaean city is new in our eyes.

Each viewpoint is unique, and plays with intimacy. A feeling of breaking in to someone’s home… Just as when strolling through the streets we sometimes wonder who lives there, why this house is theirs rather than our own, what is its history… and we wonder if from behind their windows, they are watching us go past.

This book gives us the privilege of taking that mysterious inhabitant’s place! Each window, in a spectacular manner and by the exercise of repetition, tells us a singular story… often the devil is hidden in the detail, which is telling and gives away something about the stranger under whose windows we walked our dog, our shopping, our wife, our kids or all of that at once… And through their window, in the suddenly new Marseille we have under our eyes, we could almost see ourselves passing by! All that is needed is a little imagination to create the part of the photo that is not the photographer’s but the spectator’s. In the same way we just need to turn around in our minds, to contemplate in imagination the invisible remainder of the apartment and the life inside it. All the objects and people that furnish the off-camera then become almost tangible…

The book’s lesson is thus that without doubt Marseille is as numerous as its inhabitants. It’s good to remind ourselves of this, in a city which brands itself as welcoming and cosmopolitan… This is perhaps the broad moral of this collection; in this time of a reproach-civilisation, where dividing to better rule is the rule, where all is planned for us to rise against one another, where everyone gets up in the morning asking themselves what they will find during the day to hold against their neighbour, and where in the media and on social networks, a badly chosen word, a badly placed comma, unleashes storms of presumptuous imbecility and well meaning intolerance.

This moral that I personally find in Bruno Manuel’s work, from my point of view is such, and it holds perfectly in this wonderful picture book: in life, each to their own viewpoint!

Serge Scotto - Writer

Page 156
Legend (haut): Bruno MANUEL – Photographer
The photographs in this book were taken with Canon 5D Mark II cameras and Canon and Sigma lenses
Legend (bas): MARCEL RUFO – Pediatric psychiatrist
Professor emeritus – Faculty of Medicine of Marseille

Page 157
Legend: Serge Scotto – Writer

Quatrième de couverture:

An intimate guide to Marseille

Windows are almost part of a photographer’s DNA. They provide a natural frame, already present in History’s very first photograph, taken by Nicéphore Nièpce in 1827. Born in Marseille, the photographer Bruno Manuel is passionate about the unique light and the richness of the viewpoints they provide. The theme of this book was thus somewhat evident: ‘Photographing Marseille from the windows of its inhabitants’.

Each inhabitant has in front of their eyes, from their window, a personal photograph of their city which can be shared through the artistic gaze. The book proposes a romantic stroll through the Phocaean city. Visiting it in this way, the author examines how seeing the city from a higher vantage point modifies the image we have of it from the ground; and shows the extent to which one’s daily viewpoint can be exceptional for others.

In more than 160 photographs, iconic places as well as unusual and surprising locations are depicted. Enjoy your visit!

Libby DAVIES