and discovery.
Don’t really know where to start today there was so much to take in. We set of for Chenonceau to visit the chateau as there are many around and I think that is the one I want to photograph the most.
We arrive in the village and see some boats on the river and as we pull up the boat a boat is about to leave so we jump on and spend and relaxing hour cruising up the river with French commentary and discover the certainty that laughter and crying babies are the same in any language.
We drive around and buy our tickets and I admit to having little enthusiasm for going inside. Palaces or Chateau have never enthralled me from the inside out. I love the architecture and detail and moats and gardens so my head is already back outside from the moment we walk in. Then I discover. Isn’t that what makes the joy of travel “joyful”. Discovery. Whether it s vista or a piece of art or a language or meal. Here in this space it is Louise Dupin (1706-1799).
“illegitimate daughter of Samuel Bernard, (Louis XIV’s Banker), wife of a rich farmer, the very beautiful Madame Dupin recruited Rousseau as her secretary, to help her achieve the major project on which she had set her heart: to produce an Encyclopaedia of the second sex that would demonstrate once and for all the natural equality between men and women. She used all sources from medicine to history, from politics to anthropology, from law and religion, from geography to pedagogy. She spent time in the kings library borrowing very are books and produced 47 chapters that would form her work to provide the most convincing arguments to prove that inequality between the sexes was solely due to male oppression.” Elisabeth Badinter.
The rest is interesting and the opportunity for photographs is endless. It is centuries of woman who have shaped this space, its design, its practicality, its profitability. Then it’s a chocolatier who finally ends up with the Chateau and in the First World War he builds a military hospital and treated over 2000 soldiers all at his own cost. During the 2nd world war it became to sole point of access to the free zone, and the family provided a pathway for the resistance and jews to escape. My history lesson today has been fascinating. People are brave.
