On a bright afternoon, six years ago , Virgine Zurfluh and Francois Savornin walked up the narrow stairs to Kochi Books, the charming book store on Princess Street, Fort Kochi. The French couple who run an Indian boutique, Namaste, at Loumarin, a beautiful village South of France, were in the city as part of their regular tour of India looking for products for their store back home. They browsed through the books neatly arranged on high shelves and were amazed to find a good collection of Albert Camus’ works.
Virgine and Francois got talking to Vimal G. Kumar, the owner of the store, who like many across the world, is an ardent Camus fan. Vimal was pleasantly surprised when they told him that they were neighbours of Camus’ daughter Catherine.
“We spent a long time talking that afternoon. They took photographs and videos of the shop, my opinion on Camus, and promised me that they would share this with Catherine,” remembers Vimal.
A year later Vimal got a letter from Catherine saying that she was glad that her father was still alive and relevant in a place so far away. “She also sent a gift - a book, Albert Camus: Solitude & Solidarity , a biography in text and pictures edited by her.”
When Vimal redesigned his book store recently with a cafe and art gallery decided to ask Catherine if she could share photographs of Camus from her private collection. “I put this request through my French friends who put me in touch with Catherine’s secretary, Alexandre. I got a reply. Catherine was willing to send the pictures on condition that I do not misuse them. When I told her that I had no sponsors she agreed to share them for free.”
The photographs were sent through WeTransfer and Vimal chose 20 photographs, got them framed and put up a show titled Life of Albert Camus Through Photographs . “This is the first time that these photographs are being shown in an exhibition format in India. The show is dedicated to the memory of Tabitha Kate Dean of London, who passed away in Fort Kochi. She was our friend, well-wisher and a bibliophile.” The show is on till March 31.
Catherine, in an e-mail chat, shared her excitement on the show, her thoughts about her father and the memories that these photographs trigger.
Catherine and her twin brother Jean were just 14 when Camus died. It was a shock, which Catherine says remains a ‘wound that will never completely heal.’ While Jean keeps himself aloof from his father’s pursuits, Catherine, the executor of her father’s estate, lives in the house her father bought from his Nobel Prize money in Lourmarin. It is at Lourmarin that Camus spent the last two years before being killed in a car accident. And it is here that he lies buried.
The photographs, most of them in black and white, trace Camus’ life from childhood, moments with his family, with a football team, and handsome profiles.
“My favourite picture is the one where my father, my brother and I stand among the herbs and the flowers. It was the time of insouciance. Today, still, among the herbs and flowers is the place where I feel the best,” says Catherine.
There are two striking photographs of Camus. One at the start, which is when Camus became a reader for Gallimard, a leading French publisher of books, in 1943. This photograph is significant because this was when Camus came into contact with the underground movement Combat, for whose newsletter he wrote several articles. He wanted to join the resistance but his health prevented him from doing so. He used his pen as a weapon in his fight, which found space in the pages of Combat , which was initially an underground publication but later circulated freely. The first article identified as being by Camus, entitled Total War Means Total Resistance , dates March 1944.
Catherine adds, “ Combat , the newsletter for which he wrote the most and devoted a lot of time during the German occupation and after the War, does not exist any more. L’Express still exists as a weekly magazine but my father wrote only a few articles for them during a very short time lapse.”
The other is from Montroc, a hamlet in eastern France, near Chamonix, shot in 1956. The mountains behind are clad in snow indicating that it is winter or late autumn. That photograph brings to mind Camus’ lines, “In the middle of winter I discovered in me an invincible summer,” and that “Autumn is the second spring when every leaf is a flower.”
Camus was recognised in diverse forms - novelist, thinker, resistance hero and also as one who understood the true profundity of football. He was goalkeeper for his school, the University in Algeria, and for the national team as some records say. He is the world’s only football player to win a Nobel Prize. He once said, “Really, the little I know about mortality I learned on the football pitches and the theatre stages, which will remain my true universities.”
There is one photograph dated 1941 of what appears to be the university football team where Camus is seen in the front row, third from left. Interestingly, it is placed immediately after a picture of Camus at the local primary school in Rue Aumerat (in 1920) where he first put on the football boots. Camus always wanted to play serious football but had to put off his hopes after contracting tuberculosis. Match reports of the university games say that Camus played “bravely and with passion.”
Catherine writes that her father used to say that “being a goalkeeper taught him that, in life, the ball never comes from where you expect it. I find it very true.”
Perhaps the most heart-warming pictures in the show are that of Camus with his children Catherine and Jean. These are moments that Catherine says bringback memories of her father with his “wonderful smile and lot of tenderness.”
Born and raised in Algeria while it was still a French colony, Camus came from a poor working-class background. The French always had a complicated relationship with Camus. He somehow never fitted into the Parisian circles, he never forgot his origins and the poverty he experienced. He had independent political views, which made him a speck in the eye of the left-wing literary and political establishment in France and Algeria.
After the failure of his first marriage Camus rediscovered his appetite for life in the company of women. There’s one photograph of Camus frolicking in their company on a beach. He got married to Francine in 1940, a relationship that extended till his death in 1960. There are pictures of Camus along with Francine and the twins. There’s also a photograph of Camus in front of Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, which was taken in July 1949 when he crossed the Atlantic for a second time to give a series of lectures in South America.
Despite being an ‘Outsider’ in France and Algeria Camus continues to be popular, still a best-selling author across the globe. Catherine explains, “I think my father continues to be read because he speaks to each human being as an individual. He wrote not only with his head but also with his heart and his flesh. He never starts from an abstract idea; he speaks to each of us, our experience of life, the beauty and our contradictions. He is fraternal. And he has a lot of readers in France. It is only the institutions who don’t like Camus because Camus hated power.”
Coming down the stairs you notice a few lines by Camus painted on the wall - ‘Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow. Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead. Walk beside me… just be my friend.’ These photographs tell you just that.
