Freelance Photography : Bertrand Celce

Year Of The Pig

Agriculture Fair, Paris.
Which farm animal can give to the public as much entertainment and pleasure as the pig ? This animal is weird : It is ill-mannered, groans and snorts noisily while rummaging through its juicy dirty litter, but we can't but feel love for this moving animal. There were dozens of pigs of all breeds at the Agriculture Fair and this area of the farm-animals building was a favorite of the visitors.Even when they are asleep, pigs can generate sympathy, and people at the fair would stop a minute smiling, what they would not do probably in front of a sleeping cow. Has it anything to do with their grotesque look and measurements, or their unruly energy ?

Salon de L'Agriculture

The Salon de L'Agriculture takes place every year in Paris, at the Porte de Versailles Expo complex. Hundreds of thousands of visitors come to experience the french countryside and terroirs, its farm animals and products, food and wine. I think that the 2007 edition was a success one more time. Everyone loves to mingle with the hundreds of animals and put their hand on them. This is the sort of thing that we, city dwellers, have forgotten to manipulate long time ago....
Among the many breeds of cows, some are real milk machines, like the black-and-white Holsteins, but there were many other lesser-known cows, coming from the french regions and mountains. Many of the visitors being farmers themselves, I could hear from their comments that they knew very well the differents breeds.