80th anniversary of the Liberation: a dive into the maquis with photographer Yannick Cano, at the Béziers media library

Le photographe Yannick Cano livre un beau travail de recherche et de composition. Antonia Jimenez – ML

Le photographe expose une fiction historique sur la résistance dans le Caroux et le Biterrois à travers 20 clichés d’ambiance exposés jusqu’au 16 octobre à la médiathèque de Béziers.

“Since my childhood, I have been walking its slopes, its plateau, its forests. It was much later that I became aware of the importance of this territory (Caroux and the Béziers hinterland, Editor's note) in the resistance to the Nazi occupation. My meeting with Colonel Roch and the stories of this tragic period literally teleported me to this period. I fled from farms to hamlets, taking to the maquis, sometimes as a sniper, a member of the Bir-Hakeim maquis, or even a survivor of the Fontjun ambush. I felt the cold, the fear, the hatred and the hunger. I slept under the ferns on the ground, I was betrayed, wounded, shot…"

"Artistic stops" in the bush

This is the introduction written by Valras photographer Yannick Cano, who accompanies the exhibition of twenty photo-fictions, on view until October 16 at the Béziers media library, on the resistance in Caroux and Biterrois. These words are designed to explain the research work that led the photographer to invest in these twenty photographic compositions that tell a part of the history of the Resistance in the region. His works reproduced on dibond panels are offered to the public, hung one after the other on panels that follow one another, as if to better survey this maquis, to delve into the dark and glorious hours of local resistance through “artistic stops”.

In the intimacy of the resistance fighters

Truer than life (one could almost see Rembrandt's brush), his portraits offer moments of contemplation in front of a resistance fighter, a resistance fighter, a landscape, the church of Douch… or on “details” that make History: a cigarette that burns, an armband of the FFI (French Forces of the Interior)…

August 22, 1944, Béziers finally free!

August 1944. While the Normandy landings on June 6, 1944, and those in Provence, initiated on August 15, gave the French new hope, in Béziers, the resistance fighters were in full swing. Still bruised by the recent loss of several of their own, following the battle of Fontjun (*), they prepared their counterattack. In a few weeks, the Béziers region was ablaze. On August 20, 1944, the Germans fired on the crowd on the Allées. On August 22, the resistance fighters carried out a series of attacks and managed to drive out the Germans.

Still in the same exhibition room, on the first floor, the Municipal Archives of Béziers present documents to commemorate the landing in Provence in 1944 and the Liberation of Béziers on the occasion of the 80th anniversary. This exhibition brings together photographs, archival documents, thematic panels, posters related to the Resistance to learn everything about Béziers during and after the Liberation, the reconstruction of the city and the commemoration of the Liberation.

On view until October 2 during the opening hours of the media library.

(*) Ambush set by the Germans for the men of the Puisserguier-Capestang-Montady-Poilhes-Nissan-lez-Ensérune sector, who were leaving to join the maquis which took place on June 6, 1944, at the Fontjun pass on the national road 112 in the commune of Pierrerue.

Two display cases complete the exhibition. Among other things, you can read a letter straight out of the artist's imagination, written on period paper, with a period typewriter, in which Andrée de David-Beauregard, liaison agent for the Saint-Affrique maquis (Aveyron), wounded by the Germans at the Peytafi pass (above Caussiniojouls) and dead in Faugères on August 21, 1944, opens up in complete privacy.

Exhibition on view until October 16, during the opening hours of the media library. Free admission. I subscribe to read the rest