Fifteen years ago or so, I was doing a lot of wildlife photography and I was always looking for original subjects to shoot. Now, around the large city of Lyon (or Lyons, I never knew), the second largest in France, a network of defensive military forts had been built around 1875–1900. All of them have been decommissioned a long time ago and put to various civilian uses (or just left alone to crumble), but one of them, not very far from where I live, was still used for many years for training by emergency response teams from the police and the
gendarmerie. In order to keep vegetation on the extensive grounds and moats under control, the military had “imported” a herd of fallow deer that thrived in that quiet and protected environment.
After the law enforcement agencies left and the fort was turned over to the local town authorities, the fallow deer remained. No one knew what to do with them —and no one was quite sure what to do with the fort itself. I knew the mayor and took the opportunity to ask him for permission to access the grounds and shoot the deer (with my camera, that is!) in that unusual context before they were removed and the fort was converted into some sports and cultural site. Permission was granted and I went a couple of times, gradually making myself more familiar with the deer. Eventually, some of them came to eat garlic bread from my hand.
Being there alone, in the silence of this enormous, abandoned fort, just the deer and I, was an unforgettable experience.
Given that they were taken around 2008, it’s safe to assume the camera was a D3 and the lens, either the 70-200mm from the Holy Trinity, or the 200-400mm, ƒ/4 VR II.
