Interview
The writer “Annie Ernaux and photography” – words, images and thrills
In Annie Ernaux's literary work, photography is omnipresent.
The exhibition “Exteriors – Annie Ernaux and photography” shows extracts from the Nobel Prize for Literature books as images and gives a selection of 150 photographs from the collection of the Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP) in Paris the status of “readers” of a literary work.
Surprising, subtle and convincing.
Interview with British writer and curator Lou Stoppard.
Visitor in the exhibition “Exteriors - Annie Ernaux and photography” at the European House of Photography (MEP) in Paris.
© Siegfried Forster / RFI
By: Siegfried Forster Follow
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What do these words from
Annie Ernaux
and these 150 photos from 29 photographers have in common?
“
Preserve moments that are not meant to stay.
» From the start of his literary career, photography had a primordial place.
Among the strongest moments, there is the portrait of the father in
La Place (1983)
, of the mother in
Une femme (1987)
, or the urban scenes evoked in
Journal du exterior (1992)
which served as a trigger and basis of the exhibition.
To bring out the photographic character of the writing of the Nobel Prize for
Literature
, the British writer and curator Lou Stoppard used a unique process: abolishing the boundaries between words and images to make visible what they have in them. common: to provoke sensations.
RFI
: The writer Annie Ernaux is famous for her way of approaching intimacy.
Why did you title the exhibition Exteriors
?
Lou Stoppard
:
The English translation of
Journal du exterior
, the book that is the subject of this exhibition, is called
Exteriors
.
Right away, it seemed like a perfect title, because what's interesting about this book is that Annie looks outward.
She observes.
And she is also known for looking inside yourself.
His books often focus on his own life, on his family.
So this idea from the outside, of looking at life in Cergy-Pontoise and the surrounding area, was a way of capturing what Annie was doing with this book.
But it's also about capturing what the photographers in this exhibition are doing, which is to say, capturing life and the reality of life.
Janine Niepce: “HLM in Vitry.
A mother and her child” (1965).
© Janine Niepce / Roger Viollet
What is the place of photography in Annie Ernaux’s writing
?
Annie has long had a complex relationship with photography, which she approaches in a very distinct and different way in her work.
In many of her books she refers directly to photographs, often images of herself from her childhood or of her family.
At other times, she refers to her memories as if they were images, and therefore uses very photographic language.
She says things like scenes or even images.
A famous phrase from his book
The Years
(2008) is “
all images...will disappear
”.
But what seems different to me in this book compared to her other writings is that she always wanted the words themselves to become images, and she wanted to write as if through the eyes of a photographer.
So rather than responding to images, it's as if she's trying to create new images.
Annie Ernaux is truly someone who has a complex and subtle relationship with photography, which can be seen and interpreted in different ways.
It is part of this project to open this discussion on Annie Ernaux and photography.
Beyond writing, what is the place of photography in Annie Ernaux's life? Does she take photos regularly? Did she create photo albums
?
Photos have always been present in Annie's life.
Images from his childhood are often at the origin of his writings.
She looks at a picture and tries to capture this moment.
Thus, a photo of her as a young girl will remind her of a dynamic within her family.
She will also write about the way her father stood in certain images or what a vacation photo revealed about his desires, but also about the popular culture of the time.
Photography therefore played an important role.
She also wrote a book,
L'usage de la photo
(2005), which speaks directly to the use of photography.
So it's a topic that she's engaged with, both externally, but also in her private life.
This has always had a profound impact on her writing, but also on her as someone who grew up in a contemporary life where the camera, the lens, the photograph and the family snapshot are an integral part of modern life.
And she is very aware of it.
Daido Moriyama: “Untitled” (1969) © Daido Moriyama Photo Foundation, courtesy of Akio Nagasawa Gallery
Annie Ernaux said that your exhibition took a new look at her writings. What new have you revealed about his writing
?
I can speak to the goals of the project, which were to think about her outside the context of literature, a context she often rejected in the first place.
In one of her books, she refers to the fact that she wanted her writing to be a step below literature.
This project took her out of that world and put her into a world of images and to think about what happens when we think of her as a photographer, as a maker of images.
But also to see like her, her way of seeing the world, of capturing reality.
You start the exhibition with “
On the wall of the covered parking lot of the RER station there is written: DEMENTIA
”
, extracts from Annie Ernaux's
Journal du exterior
, accompanied by photos by Claude Dityvon taken in 1979 in a shopping center in the Montparnasse Tower, a bus station on the Bercy bridge or after a fire at the Olympiades in Paris.
Why this cohabitation
?
Throughout the exhibition, his texts appear alongside photographs and I really wanted to treat his texts as photographs.
That's why they are displayed on the wall and lit almost like pictures.
With Claude Dityvon, I admired the sort of tranquility of his images, which are very detailed, but in no way dramatic or sensationalist.
They're sort of flat, and the word "flat" is often used by Annie to describe her writing.
I really don't want the images to seem like they're illustrative.
It's more of an ethos, a way of seeing.
In her text, Annie Ernaux refers to a woman on a stretcher held by two firefighters, and Claude Dityvon's image is titled
After the Fire
, with firefighters in the background.
This shows how "ordinary" and "normal" these moments of drama are in everyday life, the arguments, the moments of violence... Annie has a similar way of writing about things that could be dramatic , but without sensationalism.
There’s always this sort of clarity and calm.
Claude Dityvon: “6 p.m., Pont de Bercy, Paris” (1979) © Claude Dityvon
In the “
Confrontations
” part of the exhibition there are strange texts by Annie Ernaux [“
Nothing but the ass
, and, in a corner of a darker wall, in red,
There are no sub-humans
” ] and the disturbing images of Mohamed Bourouissa captured in the Paris suburbs, including
La prize
(2008) showing a young man sitting on the ground, stripped down to his pants and handcuffed by the police.
There are probably two things that unite all photographs.
One of them is the fascination with contemporary society.
The desire to reveal and challenge the stereotypes that exist in society and to understand why we have certain presumptions and certain habits of thinking.
And there is the desire to give weight to things that are often dismissed or neglected.
And there is a desire to see the value of these things, the impact and importance and what they reveal about life.
Annie Ernaux writes in the book about how things are often separated from their cultural content.
So a supermarket can say as much about society as a concert hall.
Visual artists like Sophie Calle or Christian Boltanski have enormously enriched photographic art. As a writer, what did Annie Ernaux bring to photography
?
Annie Ernaux's fascination with reality is something very special.
In her lecture for the Nobel Prize in Literature, she spoke about this way of capturing the sensation of reality.
It’s sort of his constant preoccupation.
So for me, he was a perfect person to think about on this topic.
Mohamed Bourouissa: “L’Impasse”, from the series “Périphérique” (2007).
© Mohamed Bourouissa – Courtesy of the artist and Mennour, Paris.
Annie Ernaux has always been a very feminist writer, with a very particular style of writing and way of looking. However, the 150 photos selected by you and Annie Ernaux to evoke this approach, to rediscover a certain sensation, to approach this practice of “
a kind of writing of reality
”, were taken, in the vast majority, by male photographers, Claude Dityvon, William Klein, Daido Moriyama, Mohamed Bourouissa….
Is this a paradox
?
The way Annie sees the world and gives weight to things is something I've found resonates with some male photographers.
For example, Daido Moriyama pursues a tireless quest for reality and he often thinks about the capabilities and limits of photography.
This is very similar to how Annie often returns to what writing is and why she writes.
It must also be said that this exhibition is based on the collection of the European House of Photography (MEP).
There are real gems: Garry Winogrand, Henry Wessel, but also surprising new voices and extraordinary women photographers [
for example Dolorès Marat or Janine Niepce, Editor's note
], some of whom have played a very important role in the way I I considered the project.
Barbara Alper produced work based on French television reports on the Gulf War.
It was very important to me, not only because his images were taken at the time
Journal du exterior
was written, but also because it is another way of thinking about public space.
Annie Ernaux talks about anyone on the train, in a restaurant, etc., but it is also about public space in terms of radio or television.
Annie refers to things she reads in the newspaper or hears on the radio.
Barbara Alper's work was therefore very important in this regard.
The subtitles that she captures when photographing the television screen, one almost has the impression that they could have been noted and published by Annie Ernaux.
Dolorès Marat: “The Woman with Gloves” (1987).
© Dolores Marat
►
Exteriors – Annie Ernaux and photography
, exhibition at the European House of Photography (MEP) in Paris, until May 26, 2024.
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