Description: Louis Clergeau's photographs of the French village of Pontlevoy, taken from 1902 through 1936, offer remarkable vignettes of rural and small-town life in the Loire Valley. Altogether, they create a portrait of the quintessential village of the period. Clergeau was born in 1877 and became interested in photography as an adolescent. He began a career as a clock maker in Pontlevoy in 1902 and divided his time between work and his passion for photographing the town and nearby countryside. Over the course of thirty-odd years, he took more than 10,000 photographs, all carefully dated and recorded. Here, a selection of 150 superb images devoted to key events and themes in the history of Pontlevoy depict the village itself, family life, and the great inventions and changes that affected life everywhere during the first decades of this century. Clergeau's camera captured winegrowers, early aviators, bicycle races, automobiles maneuvering the narrow village streets, and marching bands. We see cobblers, seamstresses, lumbermen, people picnicking with their children, fishing, chatting at the local cafb - Clergeau found much in the everyday life of his village worth recording. The selection of subjects and the composition of each picture reflect not only the exceptional artistic sensibility of Louis Clergeau, but also constitute a remarkable historical record of small-town life in the early years of the twentieth century. A brief epilogue takes the story of Pontlevoy from 1936 up through the end of World War II, reproducing photographs taken by Clergeau's daughter, Marcelle. Today, a selection of Louis Clergeau's photographs are on permanent display in the Pontlevoy museum. The text, by Jean-MaryCouderc, gives a historical tour of Pontlevoy and sets the photographs in context.

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