Foreword

I am not a visual artist. I am not an illustrator. I am not a photographer.

I am a writer. I write with words and with light, with pixels and with ink, on paper both real and electronic.

I write in the hope that you will come and travel with me inside these rectangles that mark out the world and open onto the imagination, mine, yours, and that our visions will confront one another, meet, speak to each other, perhaps clash.

I love images that speak more than images that show. To get them into the box, I have spent a long time circling, leaning in or crouching down, in search of the angle and the meaning.

There is no such thing as a beautiful photo. A good photo is first of all a geometry, “a framing”, an apt definition, what we keep and what we take away, what we decide to show and what we want to hide. Because the image we want to write is right there, in those strokes, those lines and those circles, those volumes where the eye can lose itself, reassured to be guided and always held within these four lines of rigorous proportion. Colours, textures, the moment come afterwards.

The twentieth century was exposed, as no century before it, through millions of 24 by 36 rectangles, a magical homothety of 2 and 3, hit upon by chance by Oskar Barnack, the man who truly invented photography and let it walk out into the street. Millions improvised themselves storytellers, collectors, thieves... The best turned out to be writers, journalists, reporters. They brought the world back in their marvellous magic boxes and gave it to us to share.

They put the rectangle in our hands.

Step into my eyes, I give you what they have seen.

Thierry Guedj

Summer 2023

PS: these photos were specially prepared to be seen on a large screen, at full size, by clicking on them. Some have deliberately been left dark so that your eye goes looking for the details.

Yours to see...