photography in rural France

Every morning Marionette walks down the steep hill to the boulangerie to buy bread, and walks up the steep hill with the baguette under her arm. In the afternoon, she walks the backside of the hill to the cemetary to put a flower on her husband's grave.

She owns the fields on the road from the village to Olloix, and leases them as pastureland for sheep and cows in the spring and summer.

If you want to see inside the church, 13th century, you have to see Marionette: she's the only person in the village who has the keys.

She keeps a goat in the backyard of the home where she was born and where she's lived all her life. The goat has a bell around its neck and the bell rings early in the morning, waking some of her neighbors, who never say a thing. 

While the majority of human beings now live in cities, for the first time such things were noted, Marionette lives in a hilltop village of 200 people in the Auvergne.  She says she's never been to Paris.

She was born in an age when a photograph was a special thing, though it's now possible to believe that every person in the world has had their picture taken at least once.