Anne & Gilberte Goscinny

Anne and Gilberte Goscinny. Roquebrune-sur-Argens, Summer 1977.

Anne & Gilberte Goscinny

Summer nights in Parpaillon, my parents’ home in the south of France, were entrancing. René made us laugh ourselves to tears, his daughter Anne was delightfully mischievous and Gilberte, his wife, troubled the teenager I was with her Occitan beauty. Upon capturing these two smiles that summer of 1977, I had no idea that all this would come to a sudden end, like the singing of the cicadas. A few weeks later, René collapsed during a medical exam. The world had lost one of its greatest humorists; we had lost a friend and the core of our galaxy of mates, and without its sun, it perished. We no longer laughed during summers. My two beauties would hold on to each other for a while longer until Gilberte herself passed away, taken by the cigarettes she is clasping in her hand, in this photo, while cherishing her daughter in the same loving embrace. Anne, more orphaned than anyone can be, has been writing ever since. What else? Summers are long.