Jean-Louis Duzert, a retired photographer from the Sud Ouest newspaper who stepped down in 2010, is celebrating a career milestone as 1,800 of his flamenco photographs have been accepted into the catalog of the French National Library (Bibliothèque nationale de France). For Duzert, who describes this recognition as "a bit like my marshal's baton," the honor represents the culmination of thirty-five years of dedicated work documenting the passionate art form of flamenco.
The photographer's relationship with flamenco began unexpectedly and rather painfully in 1989 when the Arte Flamenco festival was taking its first steps in Mont-de-Marsan. "At the time, I was stationed in Mont-de-Marsan," recalls the photographer, who now lives in Thonon-les-Bains. "It displeased me immensely, I had a complete rejection of it! The festival was taking place in Nahuques then. I remember that on the second day, a woman fell asleep, and bam! She fell on me, and I got a split lip."
Despite this painful introduction, Duzert soon found himself captivated by what flamenco enthusiasts call the "duende" – the mysterious power and emotional depth of the art form. He began to immerse himself in the subject, reading extensively, listening to the music, and watching performances. His quest for understanding led him to travel to Andalusia, the birthplace of flamenco, to truly grasp the essence of this ancestral art.
By 1990, for the second edition of the Mont-de-Marsan festival, Duzert had become deeply versed in the codes and traditions that unlock all the emotions carried by flamenco. "It's the Camarón year, where everything shifted," he explains, referring to the legendary flamenco singer. "That's it, I was hooked, I had the virus, I had teary eyes behind my lens." This marked the beginning of an insatiable passion that would define the next three decades of his photographic career.
From that point forward, each festival and performance only intensified Duzert's dedication to documenting flamenco. He traveled extensively, following the art form from Mont-de-Marsan to Nîmes, and from Seville to Jerez. Through his lens, he captured the pain contained in the singing, received the history of the Roma people told through each dance step, and allowed himself to be overcome by an Andalusian fever from which he never recovered. In his close-up shots, he managed to capture the cries and joy, the trance-like states, and moments of pure grace that define flamenco performance.
The photographer's extensive collection, now numbering in the thousands, documents not only the performances but also the cultural significance and emotional depth of flamenco. His work has chronicled the evolution of the art form over more than three decades, creating a visual archive that preserves the essence of flamenco for future generations. The acceptance of 1,800 of these images into the French National Library's collection represents official recognition of Duzert's contribution to cultural documentation and his role in preserving the heritage of flamenco through photography.
