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Perhaps the only misplaced curiosity is that which persists in trying to find out here, on this side of death, what lies beyond the grave.
Colette, Le Pur et l’Impur (The Pure and the Impure), 1932
Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette. One name, like she didn’t need anything else. French writer, novelist, performer, scandal. She wrote about desire, about women’s lives, about the body and pleasure and all the things polite society pretended didn’t exist. Gigi. The Claudine novels. Fifty novels, dozens of short stories. She didn’t stop.
She married three times. Had affairs with men and women. Performed in music halls, half-naked, while her first husband sold her books under his own name. She took the work back eventually, reclaimed it, kept writing.
She lived exactly as she wanted, which in early 20th century France, hell, anywhere, meant pissing a lot of people off.
When she died in 1954, they gave her a state funeral. First French woman writer to get one. The Catholic Church refused to participate because of how she’d lived. Their loss.
Now she’s here, in Père Lachaise, same cemetery as Gerda Taro, as Oscar Wilde, as Edith Piaf, as so many others who lived and died on their own terms.
Shot on infrared film in Père Lachaise Cemetery. Signed Limited Edition 17” x11” print of 10; stamped on verso. Professional black & white printing on Hahnemühle fibre-based Matt paper.