Francoise Winieska's photographs of gardens,
including the statuary below, are part of a series of lectures
on the legendary gardens of France.
SHE practiced on her kids, she improved her skills on clouds and now Francoise Winieska is one of Europe's most respected photographers of French gardens and wildflowers. Gardens of France
focus of lecturesWinieska will present a free series of four illustrated lectures beginning July 31 on "The Legendary Gardens of France." The series is part of the University of Hawaii Summer Session's Festival of France. Co-sponsors are the Alliance Francaise of Hawaii and the Garden Club of Honolulu.
Winieska, an American citizen born in France, is a self-taught photographer. She explained that she started with photographs of her four children. But as they grew older and less cooperative about photo opportunities, she started taking pictures of wildflowers, to the point where she was producing books about them. This involved a lot of airplane travel, and at cloud level she found a new source of subjects for photography. "The best, the very best clouds are at the North Pole," Winieska said.
Clouds, though, are a hobby, but gardens are a career. She has presented these slide shows on gardens of four eras of French history all over western Europe and in Southern California, and will bring things up to date with an extra lecture, "A Stroll Through Paris." This is less focused on gardens than the other four. The garden programs will be held at the Art Building auditorium, and the views of Paris in the Yukiyoshi Room of Krauss Hall. Both buildings are on the Manoa campus of the University of Hawaii.
This is the schedule:
July 31, 7 p.m. "The Rose Throughout the Ages and the French Medieval Garden"
For further information, call 956-7866.
By telephone from Los Angeles where she is visiting a daughter, Winieska explained that the slide lectures are planned to show the evolution of the French chateau garden from the medieval times through the 1920s. For the last three, she took photographs of the actual sites, but gardens planted in the 9th century are no longer available.
"I have used a composition of slides from illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages," Winieska explained. "The original gardens are gone. I took myself by the hand and I went to the Bibliotheque National (The French National Library) and I looked at their collection of these manuscripts. Then I went to another museum where they allowed me to photograph the books. I was also able to get slides from the British Museum."
She also took photographs at the Prieure Notre Dame d'Orsan in central France near Bourges. There, the owners have recreated a medieval garden designed from illuminated manuscripts, using the Emperor Charlemagne's instructions on which flowers, fruits and vegetables to grow.
The area was formerly known as Berry, home of the Duc de Berry who commissioned the three Limbourg brothers to create the "Tres Riche Heures;" a book containing the seven Roman Catholic daily prayer services and other rites of the church. The illustrations show carefully drawn landscapes of medieval France, pictured at each month of the year. The Duc, bypassing more conventional forms of payment, was so pleased with the brothers' work that he kidnapped a local maiden, gave her to the oldest brother and built them a lovely house in Bourges where they lived happily ever after. Try that on your VISA card.
The second lecture focuses on the period of the Renaissance, when Villandry was the last of the Renaissance castles to be built in the Loire Valley. It dates to the 16th century, and the gardens follow the slope of the hill. The upper two are flower gardens, the lowest is the spectacular vegetable garden arranged in the formal manner of geometric design.
The third lecture shows the gardens of Versailles, designed by the 17th century garden architect, Andre Le Notre. Winieska will trace the history of the garden from its creation by Louis XIV to the present day.
The formal gardens with their geometrical flower beds, urns, statuary, trimmed hedges, grottoes, fountains and pools were traversed by long avenues through all of the above. It
wasn't homey, but it impressed the peasants. They thought about it for 80 years and then mounted the French Revolution.
The final lecture in the series features Claude Monet's water gardens at Giverny. The great French Impressionist began a series of water landscapes in 1899, and they occupied him until his death in 1926. At his home in Giverny, near Paris, he built a landscape he could control absolutely. Monet diverted a tributary of the Epte River to create a large pond. He planted trees and flowers that would thrive in or near the water and built a Japanese footbridge across it. His entire 27-year cycle of water landscapes was devoted to the theme of peace and contemplation.
"I love Giverny," Winieska said. "They allow me to photograph on Mondays when there are no tourists. I feel I will see Monet if I look very closely."
She now lives in Rambouillet, about 75 miles southwest of Paris, but lived in Southern California for 20 years. Her English has never quite lost its engaging French accent.
"I moved back to France in the early 1980s, and became interested in wildflower photography," she said. "I began with a simple Kodak camera, but later when I took my film into a shop to be developed, the person there looked at my pictures and said that I was defeated by my camera. So I bought a second-hand Pentax and learned to use the lenses.
"In 1983, I switched to slides. I overexposed the first few rolls, but I learned from my mistakes." She had her first photo exhibition in France in 1985, and now has a collection of slides of 450 different species of wildflowers of France. She is now working on a similar collection of wildflowers of Southern California.
Winieska will also give a three-hour workshop beginning at 8:30 a.m. Aug. 9 at Lyon Arboretum on photographing plants, gardens and landscapes. There is $15.50 charge. For information, call 988-3177.
She may even share advice on how best to photograph a trade wind cloud, if you have no travel plans for the North Pole.
Gardening Calendar
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