Une présence équivoque
A series of postcards, photographs of 'reading rooms' and 'catalogue rooms' in public libraries, materializing a form of research; images found in a modest and fortuitous way at flea markets or second-hand shops, orphaned, exiled, sometimes stored in books, they are gateways to other eras. In addition to these cards, a series of original photographs of books and/or pages of books that have been torn up and damaged, in reference to censorship, attacks and auto-da-fés of the past and recent times.
The aim of this transition from the medium of photography to that of photogravure is to try and experience what it means to be altered by technique, scale and change of format, and from there to grasp the notions of memory, power and political knowledge. Why and how were books attacked? What does a library, as an archive, preserve and what doesn't? What kind of history are we talking about?
The reading room is the place where books, manuscripts and recordings of all kinds are consulted; a space where knowledge is compiled, where we learn about the past, humanity's achievements and failures, the stories that shape who we are and how we understand each other. It is a place of study and research: the place where knowledge is shared and transformed. It is an archive. An archive is a choice, and a political choice.
Why and for whom were these reading room postcards intended?
The postcard bears witness to an experience of a place that we want to share - now replaced by the "selfie" and the "post" on social networks, it also has the function of praising the wealth, power and attractiveness of a place, of a country: the library as a place of knowledge and power.
work in progress