Exhibition “Clémence” at Festival du Regard, Cergy-Pontoise
For its sixth edition, Festival du Regard presents « Clémence »: an exhibition of texts by Catherine Chaine and photographs by her husband Marc Riboud, about the birth and childhood of their daughter Clémence, born with Down syndrome.
“In this month of October, Clémence will turn forty, and five years have passed since Marc died. The vanished years have made made understand that a child’s disability is not the only wound life sends us.
When Clémence was twenty-two years old, I wrote a book as a cry against the handicap’s burden, the ambivalence of feelings and my indignation for not having had the amniocentesis I asked for during my pregnancy. The huge effort to find the exact words allowed me – I don’t know how precisely – to ease both the grief and the anger.
Today, I look at these photos Marc took, and they make me feel again the conscious happiness rather than the grief, the constant joy of Marc’s presence close to me because he was the one who loved to photograph his daugther.”
(Catherine Chaine, September 2021)
For all information about the Festival : Festival du Regard website