Denis Brihat : 1969, les Rencontres de Bonnieux

Lunch in the Luberon with Denis Brihat.  An amazing story, a year before the creation of what would become the Rencontres d’Arles, Denis Brihat had the same idea but held it in Bonnieux.  He arrived there in 1957 and build his final house there a few years later.  At the root of his idea was Maximilien Vox’s graphic rencontres de Lure, which joined together graphic designers, illustrators, artistic directors, and some photographers, with a few drunken meetings at 21 rue de Seine, in the the apartment of Romeo Martinez, mythic editor-in-chief of Camera, or  in the cafe below his place.  The summer of 1969, there were about thirty people  ended up at Bonnieux, among them were the Sudres, the Dieuzaides, and the young Lemagnys and Perrines.  Brihat especially remembers the lunches and dinners at the town restaurant and an exhibition of photos at Lacoste in the gallery Les Contards.  A movie was even filmed there directed by Michel Tournier, a collaborator of the only television show dedicated to photography, Chambre noire.  Today, the film cannot be found.  The following winter, Clergue told Sudre, Dieuzaide, and Brihat of his intention to begin a festival.  The rest is history.  Dennis Brihat is an amazing character.  He is one of the last living monuments in French photography, one of the rare survivors of the Rapho epic, and the guru and magician of analogue printing!