In the Heart of Winter by Jean-Marc Rochette | Les Etages Editions

Imagine an old hotel, nestled in a mountain hamlet deserted in winter since the 60s, and whose access road closes on December 15 to reopen on March 15. Imagine a couple who decide to settle there all year round and experience the wonders and fears of a 3-month winter, at an altitude of 1,600 meters, cut off from the world by snow and avalanches.

With Au cœur de l'hiver, Jean-Marc Rochette shares with us his installation in the Écrins massif and offers us a formidable intimate adventure story.

Extract
"Above all, we discovered a different relationship to time. Isolation refocuses you on the essentials. The course of the days is no longer disturbed by peripheral contingencies. The sunrise above the Dôme de Neige, its sunset behind Lauranour, are the metronomes that punctuate our weeks, and the silence that surrounds us is the bark of our days. We have forgotten the movement of human circulation. All that remains is the still landscape of the mountains, the breathing of the wind and the animal presences.
The body also takes back its reality. When you are separated by seven kilometers of snow, snowdrifts and avalanche paths from the first motorable road, you become very aware of all your actions. You pay attention to where you step. You become careful in the kitchen when you have a knife in your hands. You relearn your fragility. And not only during some useless feats, but in everyday life."

The story of a 3-month wintering in the Vénéon valley, when the access road to the hamlet of Les Étage was cut off by avalanches and we rethought our relationship to the world, to the surrounding nature, to creation, to time, to the other.

Paperback, 13cm x 20cm / 192 pages / a corpus of 10 unpublished charcoal drawings.