Auvers Church in Auvers-sur-Oise, France
Posted on by Debbie

Weekly photo challenge: Life imitates art…and Dr Who

Life imitates art…and Dr Who!

What a tricky challenge for this  week’s photo challenge!  I was flummoxed until I remembered my Dr Who moment in Auvers-sur-Oise in France.

Auvers Church in Auvers-sur-Oise, France
Auvers Church in Auvers-sur-Oise, France

Artists are inspired by and capture the world around us: sculptors immortalize people with statues; painters record events in their masterpieces. What about the other way around? For this week’s theme, find inspiration in a piece of art, and go further: imitate it.

The way I have interpreted this week’s theme is to find a photo that I took of a piece of art, and it’s place in popular culture.  I want to share its significance with you.

So to explain….while on a cycling tour in France a few years ago I was very excited to see that we were visiting the town of Auvers-sur-Oise.  What was so special about this little town (apart from the fact that Vincent van Gogh had lived there for a while and painted a few lovely paintings in the town) – it was also the place where an episode of Dr Who was filmed.

I was the only one in our group who recognised the church from the Dr Who series and obviously the only one to be very excited by the fact that we were there! I love Dr Who and so this was a very big moment for me!

My photos show the Church at Auvers and a photo of  Van Gogh’s painting that was on display.

The Church at Auvers plays a prominent role in “Vincent and the Doctor“, the tenth episode of the fifth series of the revived science-fiction television programme Doctor Who in 2010. In it, the painting depicts a strange, griffin-esque creature (called a “krafayis”) at a window of the church, which signifies to the show’s time-travelling protagonist, the Doctor, that something evil was lurking in Auvers-sur-Oise in June 1890. Only when van Gogh himself, played by Tony Curran, defeats the creature at the church, does the painting revert to its original, unaltered, state. The krafayis is later revealed to have been blind, with blindness to the colors and shapes of the world and sky (as Vincent drey) being a recurring theme of the episode.[8] Source

I really enjoyed the episode with the creature and the depiction of Vincent Van Gogh – he was a very likeable fellow and took to the Doctor and the whole time-travelling theme quite well, all things considered!

The church was also the resting place of Vincent Van Gogh.  He was buried with his brother Theo who died just 6 months after Vincent. I didn’t know this fact until we were there.

Grave of Theo and Vincent
The graves of Vincent and his brother Theo

So on that note I will finish by saying thanks to the Daily Post for allowing me to relive a moment in time and share my piece of ‘life imitating art’ with you.

Deb 🙂

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21 Replies to “Weekly photo challenge: Life imitates art…and Dr Who”

  2. Pingback: Life Imitates Art (Remake 2) | Chris Breebaart Photography / What's (in) the picture?

    1. That’s great Dawn, I’m tickled pink to hear that you were made curious by reading my post. It was a really interesting village, for instance everywhere we went there were posters of Van Gogh’s paintings of the buildings so that you could see the actual place and his artwork together. Thanks again .

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    1. Thank you for your lovely comment. It was a really tricky challenge this week so I’m glad I came up with something. It was a great place to visit and a fantastic cycling/barge tour from Paris to Bruges.

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