Sister Cities
Photos from 1977 bridge Ohio and France
As a young photojournalist, Dave Aton 74C got the chance to travel to France to document life in Le Vésinet, the sister city of Oakwood, Ohio, a town his newspaper covered.
In June, those photos were displayed in Le Vésinet to celebrate the forty-fifth anniversary of the towns’ pairing as sister cities.
Established in 1858 on the outskirts of Paris, Le Vésinet was designed as a “park-town” by a landscaper, Count Paul de Choulot. The city of seventeen thousand is known for its wooded avenues, mansions, and five lakes connected by rivers.
“I convinced my editor to give me two weeks in Le Vésinet to do an eight-week picture story for our paper. I lived with two families, and I’ve been back many times,” Aton says. “Last year, on a visit there, I persuaded the city reps to sponsor a forty-year retrospective exhibition of the work I did in 1977.”
