Just a moment
Just a moment is enough to be amazed – the moment leading the reader back into the life of Jacominus Gainsborough, the moment that Rébecca Dautremer needs to capture and represent, in a unique, large concertina illustration the story of a hundred characters caught in a freeze frame, in just a moment of their lives.
The French illustrator innovatively weaves the third chapter of Jacominus's story into a hundred illustrations in pencil and ink. Starting with Jacominus Gainsborough, the protagonists are caught in different positions and situations: chatting, thinking, stopping by in hat shop, at the ice parlour or at the florist. A hundred lives succeed one another, becoming single images within a universal story.
A story that expands, metaphorically but above all physically, into a concertina publication that's two metre long and full of wonder. That's all Rébecca Dautremer needs to narrate what her hundred character are experiencing, all at the same time: moments that are joyful, serious, mundane – repetitive perhaps, special and momentous, amusing. A kaleidoscope embodying the life of each one of them, and each one of us. Because, as the author herself states in the foreword, “they all deserved that moment” – to be the star of that moment. Just like the reader, who gets lost in the crowd.
Un attimo soltanto (Just a moment)
by Rébecca Dautremer
Rizzoli, 2022