Jockeys

Seaside, Normandy coast, Deauville, city – among other leisure activities – of horse racing. Charles Fréger returns to horses. He too, like many painters in the 19th century, regularly tries to capture the animal. To make it fit and hold in its frame, the visual orchestration of the legs, the tail, the head carriage, to reach the harmonious image. A fortiori here, the horse is racing, not guarding; forcing it to stop is a challenge. But if Charles Fréger returns to the equestrian theme, it is for the man who rides him: the jockey. At the training center in Deauville, the town that commissioned this series, he observes, as he did in previous works devoted to training environments, White Paws or Working Blue, the repeated gestures, the panoply of attitudes adopted to be at one with the job. From one photograph to another, from a yellow satin cap to another with orange and blue stripes, we observe in turn the mimicry in the holding of a whip, the wiggle, and the postures learned to keep the balance on the galloping horse