Car burning and cow massages: French village quirks – in pictures

Over 12 years, Thomas Rousset probed every corner of his childhood village Prabert, on the border of France and Switzerland, to create a surreal, tender and fictitious world examining the totemic and ritualistic aspects of rural life. Prabérians is available to buy through Loose Joints. All photographs: Thomas Rousset

In his creative collaborations with his fellow Prabérians, Rousset engages with deep traditions of rural eccentricity and a dignified non-conformity that unites and binds communities against the harsh realities of everyday agricultural life. Rousset says: ‘On the 10th of each month, a day of freedom and confetti is organised for the village lambs. But all good things must end, and at 17:00 sharp, the shepherds collect them’

As small­-scale agricultural villages appear stuck in time or close to extinction, Rousset catapults Prabert into a fantastical, hallucina­tory world, creating heightened moments of absurdity among intimate portraits and observations of daily village life. He uses a mixture of real scenarios and created, imaginary pictures, places and objects to make something surreal and fantastical

Rousset mixes these exaggerated scenarios with striking landscapes and naturalistic portraits, hinting at the creative potential locked within the land and its inhabitants, and the daily dance between work and play, solemnity and joy. Of this image he notes: ‘The custom in Prabert is that when children have chickenpox, they stick stickers on their pimples to make the disease more cheerful’

‘Papet shows here how to gently put a hen to sleep by placing her head under a wing and rocking her. In the picture, she is already in the arms of Morpheus.’ You can read more about this image in our Big Picture feature here

‘One can be gentle and be a hunter; one can be in love and be a hunter; one can be a poet and hunter; one can love roses and be a hunter’

‘She is looking for answers; maybe she is analysing the composition of the surface soil in the pastures in her area in connection with her agricultural training, or perhaps she is looking for the best maggots that can only be found in this particular place to use for fishing for rainbow trout in the local rivers. These fish are notoriously hard to catch’

‘My cousin loves his cows so much that he massages them regularly. With small human hands, the effect could be more optimal. So he invented a tool to maximise the benefit of the massage on the cows’

‘Nicolas’s legs allow him to quickly pass the stone walls bordering the region’s pastures. He can thus quietly go about his hobby, namely the study of the region’s animals and, more particularly, the birds. His binoculars serve no other purpose than that’

‘It has always been uncomfortable to cross snowy mountain passes on donkeys or mules. You are constantly being rocked back and forth; it’s hellish. I invented the donkey rocking chair, which perfectly follows the animal’s movement during the ascent and descent to travel in the best conditions. RIP Mélodie’

‘Here is one of the rare models of the first moped that belonged to a Prabérian. My cousin found it in an abandoned barn. Today he dreams of restoring it so that it becomes the centrepiece of the village museum’

‘Françoise and her buzzard that she took in after it smashed against her window. She looked after it, fed it, and now they are the best friends in the world, living in freedom in her house’

‘After the war, when industrial production developed, the people of the village all wanted to buy cars. When these were obsolete or out of fashion, they were left to end their lives in the middle of a field (there were many more fields after the war than there are today). In the meantime, the forest grew and these were sometimes trapped in the trees. This allowed the village’s young people to release their anger by burning cars’

‘Here we are in the shepherd’s hut. For several months he stays alone in the alpine pasture with his dogs and the animals. From time to time he gets food and exchanges a few words with one of the farmers, but that’s all. We don’t know him very well; he is somewhat mysterious and never talks about himself. He was once married and lived in Grenoble with his wife and children. Nobody knows why he left everything to isolate himself in the mountains’

‘We see the myth of the ferryman on his boat (here, an orange plastic canoe) who guides the souls across the river with his light so that they arrive safely in the realm of the dead’