Mistral: The Legendary Wind of Provence

To the people of Provence, the Mistral is a local menace. It regularly ruins weddings, steals hats and scarves with ease and, at its worst, this epic wind has the strength to sweep up metal chairs and smash them into neighbouring windows. Even so, says Rachel Cobb, “I think maybe they actually like it”. “What I feel is that it’s a source of pride among the Provincials, a way of defining the region,” she adds. “They can withstand it, and they’ve learned to live with it.”

Cobb’s new book, Mistral: The Legendary Wind of Provence, is a record of the 20 years she spent hunting the wind. She has holidayed in the south of France for 40 summers now and, though she has been victim to the perils of the strong gales, she’s also found it inspirational – as have many other artists and writers. “I’m energised by it,” she says. “At night, when you hear it stir, you can feel the energy in the air.”

Cobb took her first photograph of the Mistral in 1998, when she shot one of the burning red skies that’s believed to be a sign of its impending arrival. Since then, Cobb has been obsessed by it. When she isn’t in Provence, she follows French weather reports from her apartment in New York; she also keeps in touch with friends working on ski resorts over the winter, in case conditions get really bad.

Even with this devotion though, it was hard to catch the Mistral on film. Often Cobb would be waiting, camera at the ready, for the wind to launch a scarf soaring through the sky, or she would spend hours shooting on top of a mountain, only to find the conditions just weren’t right. “Where this invisible force touches something, is where I am able to make my pictures,” she explains. “Some stories take longer than others, but this story took an exceptionally long time.”

A bride’s veil gets tangled up by the mistral, as she enters the Saint-Romain church, 24 July, 2010, Crillon-le-Brave, France.

Cobb recalls being invited to a truffle festival in Carpentras, for example. To her delight, the Mistral was due to blow fiercely – but that morning her son got sick and she had to stay at home, listening to the wind rattling against her house. Her friends returned complaining about the weather. “You’re lucky you didn’t come,” they said, “the truffles went everywhere!” “I was beside myself,” laughs Cobb. “The Mistral had won again.”

In 2012, Cobb decided to commit herself to pinning it down, enrolling her son into a local school and moving to Provence. Staying there with her family for 16 months, she produced the bulk of the book she’s now published. Living in Provence also gave her a deeper insight into the Mistral and its effects, she says – she found traces of it such as chippings on stone walls, for example, and in the careful measures shopkeepers and farmers take against it.

Her finished book includes quotes by writers who have also been influenced by the wind – some of her favourite words on the Mistral were written by Jean Giono, for example, who wrote that it “growled over the carcasses of the houses, like a lion disturbed at its meal”. The excerpts reinstate how important and present this invisible force is to Provence as a place. “I hope that it helps people imagine the Mistral in the way that I intended to photograph it,” says Cobb.

www.mistralthebook.com Mistral: The Legendary Wind of Provence is published by Damiani, priced at $50, available to buy from  www.artbook.com

Wind itself is celebrated every September at the Fête du Vent (festival of the wind) on Prado Beach in Marseille. 14 September 2002, Marseille, France

Windfall: an unearned, unexpected gain, a piece of good fortune. Fruit tombé: fallen fruit, windfall. 27 July 2010, Villes-sur-Auzon, France

From Mistral

In windy conditions, some spiders orient their webs to make them less exposed to the brunt of the wind and others weave smaller webs.

Morning mist being blown up and away during a mistral. Route de Malaucène, France.

During the Festival d’Avignon, an annual arts and theater festival, a table setting was meant to withstand gusts, but a mistral carried away a napkin. 25 July 2010, Avignon, France

A mistral loosens the stage decorations for the school fair play at the École Intercommunale in Saint Pierre de Vassols, France.

At the Prado Beach in Marseille, the mistral kicks up waves to about 30 feet in the air. The mistral can lead to poor atmospheric visibility almost as the sea spray gets carried up by the wind. 14 March 2013, Marseille, France

Tourists are buffeted by the mistral on the Pont St-Bénézet, often called the Pont d’Avignon. A Provençal expression goes: Windy Avignon, liable to the plague when it has not the wind, and plagued by the wind when it has it. 26 June 2009, Avignon, France.

Lunch during a mistral – trees leave dancing shadows on the table. 21 August 2017, Cliousclat, France

Marigold Warner

Deputy Editor

Marigold Warner worked as an editor at BJP between 2018 and 2023. She studied English Literature and History of Art at the University of Leeds, followed by an MA in Magazine Journalism from City, University of London. Her work has been published by titles including the Telegraph Magazine, Huck, Elephant, Gal-dem, The Face, Disegno, and the Architects Journal.