His photos and films have toured the world. Yann Arthus-Bertrand, the famous photographer whose fame is well established since his book The earth from the sky in 1999, dedicated his life to nature and the environment. His latest film Legacy is broadcast on Tuesday January 26, 2021, on M6, at 9:05 p.m. A film to raise awareness about the climate emergency, on the responsibility of each person to make a contribution to the building of a better world. All his life, the 74-year-old photographer has been involved in ecology. At his side, a person gave him his unwavering support. His wife Anne. It was together that it all started. They were young when they decided to go to Africa in the 1970s. It was during this stay that Yann Arthus-Bertrand discovered a passion for photography while studying lions. "When we met, I remember she took her children under her arm and left with me for Africa., Kenya. She didn't ask herself any questions, she literally gave up everything to follow me. Absolutely everything", he explains in an interview for The Journal of Women.
"For the past 30 years Anne has taken care of our family a lot. It's my turn."
The founder of GoodPlanet still admires it: "It's only women who do that. I don't know if guys can sacrifice everything like that to follow a woman, to the point of changing jobs, life … She was a stylist and she stopped everything for me. For all these years, she has been by my side and she has been very critical of my work.“Since then, his wife Anne has become a psychotherapist. Together, they had a son named Tom, in addition to the two children she had from a previous relationship. But one day, the bad news falls. His wife has Parkinson's disease. Anne Arthus-Bertrand discovered it when she was only 50 years old, in the early 2000s. "My left hand twitched from time to time. I first saw a rheumatologist who looked away and advised me to go see a neurologist. (…) For my part, I haven't thought about Parkinson's at all. I thought this disease only affected the elderly", she confided to our colleagues from Parisian, in April 2011.
She hesitates a little before announcing it to her husband. "When she told me, it was terrible. Thanks to my profession, I had heard about this pathology through topics on pesticides. Studies have shown a clear link between the two. I was devastated and very angry with the collective denial of these products", then declared Yann Arthus-Bertrand on a daily basis. From then on, this ordeal brought them even closer together:"For the past thirty years, Anne has taken care of our family a lot. It's my turn."As with everything, it is together that they fight against the disease.
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