The Castle

For the last 20 years James Hill has been photographing life at his wife’s ancestral home in France, the Chateau de Maillebois. Surrounded by a walled park, the property is an island of the past caught in the present. The images, both tender and whimsical, explore the plethora of emotions that come from living in a house bearing so much history and how the family and the local community interact with it. The photographer watches his family in their role as temporary custodians of the castle, attempting to maintain its traditions and carry them into an uncertain future. James Hill has been a contract photographer for The New York Times since 1995 and his images have won many of photojournalism’s most important prizes including World Press Photo, the Pulitzer Prize and the Visa d’Or. His last book, Somewhere between War and Peace, was published by Kehrer Verlag in 2014.