What does a photojournalist do when he is a tourist?
The same as the rest of the mortals, assures
Sergi Reboredo
: take the cell phone out of the pocket and take pictures.
Reboredo (Sant Adrià de Besòs, 1971),
one of the most recognized Spanish photographers on an international scale
, walks through
Nimes
, in the south of France, with the tranquility of those who know that this time they do not have to take pictures to earn a living.
“Perhaps the difference with a tourist”, he thinks, “is that I try to tell a story from a set of images.
And this can also be done with the mobile ”.
Reboredo has fought on multiple professional fronts: in
Iraq occupied in 2003
by the United States and its allies; in
Kenya
reporting on AIDS patients; in
Sri Lanka
bearing witness to the destruction caused by the 2004 tsunami; or aboard the
Transcantábrico
, one of the train trips that appears in his book
Trains around the world.
Established in his native Sant Adrià, in the province of Barcelona, in recent years he has been signified by travel photography. Reboredo returned last May to the capital of the Gard department to present his latest book,
101 surprising places in France
(Anaya Touring publisher).
The trip, to which EL PAÍS was invited, was on the high-speed line of the French state company SNCF that connects Barcelona with Lyon, and which stops in Nimes.
A city of 150,000 inhabitants, it houses a unique legacy of the Roman Empire and is a benchmark for bullfighting culture in France, as well as one of the proposals in Reboredo's book.
The photographer agreed to tour the mobile city in hand and capture for
El Viajero
the corners and moments of urban life that most caught his attention.
The Jardins de la Fontaine, in Nimes.
SERGI REBOREDO
The Roman Temple and Norman Foster
In front of the
Maison Carrée,
also called “the square house” (arenes-nimes.com), the visitor reacts impulsively: without thinking he directs the telephone towards its pediment and its columns. It is the only Roman temple "completely preserved" in the world, says the tourist office of the City Council. It was built in the first years of the 1st century and has served since its foundation as
the nerve center of Nimes
.
Alexander Dumas
explained
in 1841, in his book
Impressions of travel, noon from France
, that "the Maison Carrée is so wonderful that Louis XIV and Napoleon seriously considered moving it to Paris."
The operation could not be because "the stone pillars that had supported it for centuries were deeply sunk in the earth," said D'Artagnan's father on a journey he made through the territories of Occitania accompanied by his dog
Mylord.
The interior of the museum of contemporary art in the French city.
SERGI REBOREDO
Reboredo is no exception, Maison Carrée attracts him like Dumas or like tourists who return to concentrate in front of it after leaving the worst of the pandemic behind. The Sant Adrià photographer does not shoot compulsively: somewhat distracted, almost as if he is not paying attention, he seeks the best angle to capture the architectural ensemble. His favorite is the image he takes of the
maison
from inside the
Carré d'Art
, the city's contemporary art museum. From that position he has a panoramic view of the square and the lower floor of the museum, where there is a municipal library full of students. It is the contrast between the monument of the past and the future.
The whole is harmonious
and the photo shows how
the temple is perfectly integrated into the old quarter of Nimes
.
A setting, the
place,
majestic, which was redesigned in 1993 by the architect
Norman Foster
, who was also the author of the contemporary museum building.
Reboredo is struck by the
visual balance between the interior stairs and the museum's glass ceiling
.
In one of his photographs, a woman comes face to face with the sculpture that welcomes the visitor: one of Ugo Rondinone's monstrous heads from his
Sunrise
series
.
East.
The head, the stairs and the very structure of the building flood the image with silver sparkles.
Aerial perspective of the Roman amphitheater of Nimes.
SERGI REBOREDO
The crocodile and the bull
Nimes is a city especially spoiled by history.
It is a fashionable city
even among Parisians who, during the pandemic, and with the rise of teleworking, have decided to move outside the capital. It's three hours away from Paris by high-speed train, the same time it takes to get there from Barcelona. Not only did Foster make his mark here, so did
Philippe Starck
. The city's official coat of arms is a 1985 creation by the French designer - a revision of one of Europe's most unique emblems, that of a crocodile tied to a palm tree.
In the 16th century, a coin minted in Nimes in 27 BC was discovered.
On one side was the bust of the
Emperor Octavian Augustus
and on the other, the name of Nemausus — the Latin name for Nimes —
a palm tree and a crocodile tied to it with a chain
.
The colony was created in honor of Octavian, and the enigmatic coin was stamped to commemorate the conquest of Egypt by the first Roman emperor after the battle of Accio, in 31 BC, in front of Marco Antonio and Cleopatra.
The street of the Treasury of Nimes.
SERGI REBOREDO
Starck's stylish crocodile appears in every corner of the city, although it is perhaps at the City Hall where the contrast is greatest between this modernized icon and the first institutional coats of arms with the crocodile, dating from the 16th century. Reboredo paid special attention to the
arches of Calle de la Tesorería
, a corner of the access to the Town Hall that dates back to the 15th century. The photojournalist was stationed in a corner to capture the movement of officials and customers in the adjoining bars. The joy was perceived in the passers-by who, after months of severe sanitary restrictions, could finally enjoy a glass of
pastis
or a dinner on the terraces of the medieval quarter.
The sculpture of a fighting bull, by the Georgian artist Djoti Bjalava, on the Charles de Gaulle esplanade in Nimes.
SERGI REBOREDO
The old town of Nimes is an island surrounded by wide avenues and squares that suddenly open up the urban space, as if they wanted to replicate the grandeur of Paris.
On the
Charles de Gaulle esplanade
, the sculpture of a fighting bull eight meters long was the last neighbor to arrive.
Work of the artist
Djoti Bjalava
, it was installed in 2018 in front of the Roman amphitheater, today one of the largest bullrings in France.
As the prohibitions to celebrate bullfights have been increased in autonomous communities such as Catalonia,
the bullfighting festivals of Nimes are increasingly celebrated by Spanish fans
.
Right-handers in the first row do not miss the weeks of festivities in the French city in one of the most spectacular squares: its Roman circus, from the 1st century, was conceived to house 23,000 people.
"The function and the gigantic proportions of the sand show a state of civilization different from ours", noted in 1835 the writer Prosper Mérimée in one of his reports as inspector general of Historical Monuments.
Sergi Reboredo is clear about what to do in the Roman amphitheater: if visitors get lost in its five galleries, he instead goes straight to the top to capture in an image "the gigantic proportions" of which Mérimée spoke.
Ruins of the Temple of Diana.
SERGI REBOREDO
The spring of life
Another snapshot with which Reboredo did not hesitate was taken in front of the
ruins of the Temple of Diana
: the rays of the sun seem to draw the stones blackened by the fire that destroyed the building at the end of the 16th century, during the wars of religion between Catholics and Protestants. The structure of the temple is believed to have served as an imperial sanctuary, library and as a place of worship dedicated to Augustus around 25 BC, although its exact function remains in reality a mystery.
Today
monumental pine trees
grow between the ancient corridors of the temple
. It is located in the most important area of the town, the
Jardins de la Fontaine
, the first public park inaugurated in Europe in 1738 by Louis XV. They are gardens that drink from the spring of Nimes and on which vestiges of all the peoples that settled there have been accumulating. In the canals that have transported water to the city and its fields since the 18th century, Reboredo is left with a final scene, of which the author highlights its symmetry: two women on a bridge, each with a child, placed as a reflection on the water that brought life to this corner of Europe.
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