Happy Days in the Basque Country is a rare work that exalts the precious feeling of fully belonging to the world, of feeling in symbiosis with a region where the air charged with happiness whets the appetite for life, encourages one to eat the sky and the clouds and dive into the ocean towards other horizons.
For more than thirty years, Claude Nori has been capturing with relish the days and nights, the passing of the seasons, the changing light and the sun with a brightness so subtle that it seems to have neither origin nor destiny.
He photographs his family, his wife, his daughters, the locals and the moving encounters he has with exceptional people who come to breathe the air of stimulating creativity.
Drunk with images, he abandons himself to the metaphysical dazzlements dear to De Chirico. His sentimental escapades take us to the interior lands, the hills and the mountains, in the midst of landscapes where a certain harmony still reigns.
Using poetic texts, personal reflections, extracts from personal diaries or quotations borrowed from fellow authors, he offers a contemporary form of narration which sheds new light on the Basque Country and restores all its originality.
His photographs, avoiding the oft-repeated clichés, allow us to discover another reality, surprising by their framing and the familiarity they seem to maintain with the places and the people, awakening this stimulating melancholy which will delight all those who love the Basque Country from Biarritz to Anglet, Hendaye, Arcangues, Saint-Jean-de-Luz via Itxassou, Cambo-les-Bains, San Sebastián or even the Bardenas desert.
Publication: Claude Nori at Contrejour, October 2011
Format: 25 x 34 cm
240 color and black and white pages, bound
ISBN: 979-10-90294-01-1
