Chevaleresque

Through this series of portraits, Rip Hopkins reveals how the inhabitants of Maisons-Laffitte, a city historically linked to the horse, perceive and appropriate the horse in their imagination.
To the northwest of Paris, on the edge of the Saint-Germain-en-Laye forest, is a city haunted by the presence of horses since the end of the 18th century. Its racecourse has the longest straight line in Europe.
Men and horses live together there. Tracks are provided for horseback riding. The mounted animal always has priority. An anachronistic castle recalls times before industrial modernity, when the horse was man's closest ally. Its legendary monumental stables have now disappeared. Also the Château de Maisons - that's what it's called - commissions a photographer every year to represent the horse within its walls. A presence of paper instead of life, so to speak. In all fields of contemporary creation, the theme of the horse seems to have been deserted, whereas it was a mythological being par excellence and the source of countless fabulous stories.
Its symbolic charge is powerful.
Text by: Pauline de La Boulaye