It was in 2021. At the initiative of the Ministry of Culture, the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BNF) launched a large public order to 200 photojournalists. The aim is to establish a ' radioscopy of France at the end of the health crisis ". Three years later, the Bibliothèque nationale de France presents, from March 19 to June 23, 2024, an exhibition, a non-exhaustive restitution of this unprecedented exploration: «France under their eyes».
Through a selection of 450 photographs, the exhibition brings out the diversity of representations of our country. Organized around the national motto combined with the plural - «Freedoms», «Equalities», «Fraternities», augmented for the occasion of a fourth: «Potentialities» – The exhibition route shows the wide variety of topics covered and the collective approach to this image dive. Interview with its curators, Héloïse Conésa, Chief Curator for Contemporary Photography and Emmanuelle Hascoët, Project Manager for the large commission in the Prints and Photography Department of the National Library of France.
How did you design the exhibition route?
Héloïse Conésa We wanted to show the work of the Great Commission through a collective approach and not as part of a sampling of individual reports. The challenge was to build common from all these images. The republican motto around which the course is organized seemed to us the most convenient and federative way to achieve this. A national currency, moreover, declined in the plural to show the plurality of nuances and approaches. “Freedom” thus becomes “Freedoms” and covers freedom of worship as well as sexual freedom or freedom to move. Three emblematic words to which we have added that of «potentialities» because the Big Order has a retrospective dimension - it begins with the health crisis and covers the two years that followed - but also prospective: these potentialities highlight the solutions brought to the challenges of the contemporary world as well as the threats that lie ahead.
What is this France captured on the spot by photojournalists?
Emmanuelle Hascoët : It reflects the current topics that photographers usually cover for the press. The populations highlighted are those most affected by the crisis: youth, the elderly, caregivers, the world of work, public services… There is also a lot of work on environmental issues and new decreasing lifestyles, neo-rurality but also high technology. The solidarity, the reception of migrants and humanitarian actions have also mobilized many photojournalists. But we also observe that traditionally treated subjects were left out. There is little work related to major political events, such as elections or the rise of extremes. Moreover the «France which goes well» is almost not photographed. We can evoke the representation of the ultrarich, who are considered more difficult to access. The order is also told in hollow.
Héloïse Conésa With regard to political representation, however, it is not insignificant to note that the Grand Commission began at the time of the presidential election, in other words, in a period when photographers were already responding to numerous press orders on this topic. So working on another topic was sort of a valve. More broadly, politics refers to the question of the common, yet what strikes in the works of the great commission is the explosion of the intimate, of claimed individualities. This lack of frontal representation of politics does not signify the absence of commitment on the part of photographers.
What characterizes these journalistic and documentary writings?
Héloïse Conésa : There are several schools of photojournalism. The first, heiress of the photoreportage and privileging a photograph of the event, is little represented in the Great Commission. It is easy to understand: the work of photojournalists, who have benefited from seven months of production, is more akin to investigative journalism. Some favoured portraits negotiated with the people they met. The landscape can also be represented, the portrait/landscape diptych unfolds frequently. Others proposed original documentary writings putting into perspective different temporalities, the present, of course, but also the past with archival images. Still others return to the analog which is rare today in a press photography that favors the immediacy of digital.
Emmanuelle Hascoët It should also be noted that the photographers conducted many interviews and interviews with their subjects. It thus happens that sound and audiovisual recordings accompany the photographic reports.
You point out that this exhibition is an important milestone in the BnF’s exhibitions devoted to photography. Why?
Héloïse Conésa : That the BnF was chosen to pilot this command makes sense. The institution has dual legitimacy. On the one hand, it keeps the press and press photography collections among the most important in France. On the other hand, the representation of France by photography is a recurring theme of the major exhibitions it has presented over time, I think of «La France de Raymond Depardon» in 2010 which Emmanuelle Hascoët had coordinated on the Magnum side, at the exhibition «France 14» the same year on the occasion of which 14 young photographers had tried to represent contemporary France, finally, in 2017, at «Paysages français: Une aventure photographique, 1984 - 2017» whose curatorship I was alongside Raphaële Bertho and who was particularly returning to the Photographic Mission of DATAR. The BnF has in its collections all the archives of this mission to 29 photographers whose objective was to represent the French landscape of the 1980s. The 2021 order is part of the continuity of these exhibitions as part of an unprecedented diversity of approaches that makes sense again in view of our research mission. This wealth of photographs will now be explored by historians, sociologists, philosophers…
By its magnitude, it is also an exhibition that will mark the history of photojournalism...
Héloïse Conésa Indeed. With a budget of 5.46 million euros, it has no equivalent. In terms of funding and winners, the legendary photography section of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) that documented the Great Depression in the US was not as important. Moreover, one of the missions of the Great Commission was to supplement the large editorial offices which did not always have the possibility of sending photographers in reportage. Subsequently, the media outlets played perfectly the game, broadcasting these reports. It is clear that many of the subjects covered foreshadowed what happened next, particularly with regard to the farmers' movement, the pension reform, or the events in Mayotte, it is very interesting to observe. Finally, let us mention the various events, round tables, projections, meetings,, which will take place during the exhibition. Starting with the study day on the theme «Photojournalism: the issues of production and dissemination» on 21 March which is part of the General States of Information.
Large order: a broadcast tailored to the event
“In parallel to the exhibition of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the valorisation operations that began in spring 2023 in France and ultra-marine continued, stresses Emmanuelle Hascoët. About forty are planned in 2024, notably in La Réunion, Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, at the Rencontres d'Arles, in several places of the Diagonal network, at the Institut pour la photographie in Hauts-de-France, at the Niépce Museum in Chalon-sur-Saône, at the Musée de Bastia…
"Thanks to the Caravan of ruralities in partnership with Europe, architectural and urban projects (operator promoting the conduct of highly partnership actions between the ministries in charge of Architecture, Urbanism, Housing, Local Authorities, of Ecology), we also go to rural areas: Vorey-sur-Arzon, Saint-Orens-de-gameville… The Great Commission will therefore be widely distributed.
“In addition, photographers can exhibit their work in the galleries that represent them, small festivals, or exhibition venues that invite them. All these ancillary releases are added to this valuation. Finally, it was important that the press titles include the photographers' reports. This was done naturally. A large «Wall Paper» presented in the exhibition will illustrate it. Similarly, an application has been specially designed to view all these publications.”
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