In old times, when humanity was not permeated with lies and falsehood, people impartially and
reverently attitude to all organs of the body, including the underlaying belly.
One of the giants of world literature, the monk-writer Fran?ois Rabelais in his immortal work
"Gargantua and Pantagruel" threw the mask of hypocrisy and enthusiastically described and
discussed the excrements of natural human poisonings, he created a sort of grotesque,
but in his kind the unique and unrepeatable hymn to the human body and its organs.
In old days, when the human mind was not clouded by philosophy of middle-class morality,
people felt themselves united with the Creator and Cosmos. They did not turned away from the
horrors of death.
The concepts of life and death had been linked together, and any farmer in his wise look at the
manifestations of God around him and inside him could "give odds" to any modern talker from
the Department of Philosophy.
Crazy celebrations, accompanied by a drunken overeating, alternated with gloomy funeral
procession, announced by cries of penitents.
People had fun at weddings and at Christmas in order to frequently, because of epidemics and
inability to fight disease, to bury the next day their loved ones. Death and life kept pace with
people, and people loved it and perceived as something natural.
One of the followers of the good French tradition in literature, chronicler of human passions -
Emile Zola's in his novel "Le Ventre de Paris" as if resurrected the Rabelaisian moments in the
description of the Center of Paris life, the famous Les Halles.
Les Halles concentrated in itself all. There was blood, there were vegetables, fruits, bloody
carcasses, skins game, variegated feathers of pheasants, ducks, geese and swans shimmered
with all the colors of the rainbow.
The huge like meat carcasses butchers rushed around Le Ventre de Paris, loaded on themselves
a lot of forty-pound chunks of meat. There were Illuminated by lights night restaurants such as
"Pig Legs", in which idle revelers and night-life lovers indulge in the sacred cause of Gargantua,
in order to fill up and cheer up their womb, to wander around Les Halles and stare at the revived
Flemish painting by Snyders which told about the triumph of life over death.
On the streets loitered hefty prostitutes, awaited when meat-carriers took their bloody loads,
overturned the last aperitif glass and could took them to the halfpenny hotel room to taste some
of the benefits and other meat. Right there revolved packs beggars - "clochards" - to whom
threw scraps from the table of the huge kitchen, called "Le Ventre de Paris".
At six o'clock in the morning, after the return is given to Bacchus and abundant tables of
restaurants, idle revelers - among whom one could see the black cylinders
aristocrats and slender figure of expensive Parisiennes, heading to the gates of "Maison de la
Sante" (the famous French prison).
At six o'clock the prison guards opened the gates and the public, which is enough
Having seen the blood four-legged animals could enjoy the spectacle of blood bipeds,
becausein at six o'clock in the morning criminals sentenced to death were guillotined.
Times change. Despite the protests of majority French people, "Le Ventre de Paris" was
demolished. Paris "lost his belly." According to many French people,
Paris became dead, but people still eat bloody steaks and overeated in "Pig Legs".
Abolished the guillotine, but they do not mind to take a look how severed heads on television.
Only prostitutes continuously stand on the streets, where once stood Les Halles.
I was lucky to see alive "Le Ventre de Paris". I knew that it is subject to destruction and I spent a
year there, left at midnight and returned at eight in the morning, captured it in photographs and
drawings. I took more than 5 000 photos. I was most interested in meat-carriers. These giant
people could easy to take on themselves the 400 kg carcass, these Parisian strongmens were
the embodiment of strength and a monstrous grace. They were the only ones who trusted to
carry the deceased body of King Saint-Denis to the tomb, now it is a well known place for fans
who like to stare or use the service of prostitutes.
In the exhibition "Le Ventre de Paris and Phantoms of Les Halles" I tried to create my own hymn
to labor of meat-carriers and show the cycle of life and death,
laughter of joy and grin of death.
Feature article to the exhibition "Le Ventre de Paris and Phantoms of Les Halles"
Quoted from the book by A. Petryakov "Through the Looking Glass of Master"
