La sélection de / Yo-Yo Gonthier: Spécial photographie

Originally from Transylvania, Gyulus Halasz (1899-1984) took the name Brassaï when he started out as a photographer in 1929. In this book, prefaced by Paul Morand and published in 1932, Brassaï redraws the City of Light and takes us along with him on his night walks.

Brassaï had a particular eye, "alive" said Henry Miller, guided by the irrepressible need to recreate the atmospheres he had known in the past. Through the lens, Brassai thus reconstructed his own Paris, an unknown, obscure, even despised Paris. A city shrouded in night and mist, the Paris of partying, of bistro customers, of the dancers of the Folies Bergères and of music-hall. He creates an ode to the elegance of Parisian architecture, showing all the luminosity of this city by taking it as it is once the darkness has fallen.

"I was in search of the poetry of the fog that transforms things, the poetry of the night that transforms the city, the poetry of time that transforms people... " Brassaï

In 1970, after having been a reporter during the Soviet invasion, Josef Koudelka (1938, Moravia) renounced his Czech nationality, became stateless and began a long journey: that of exile. Crossing the borders of Europe, as a free man, he photographs what he sees: places, objects, souls. These images of life exude an incredible depth and strength. Both nomadic and visionary, Koudelka depicts a world where tragedy pervades daily life.

The selection of images offered by Exils takes us on a journey that tells us as much about being as it does about the elsewhere, and which today finds a particular acuity, at a time when Europe is shaken by crises.

Silent comic strip by Australian Shaun Tan (1974, Fremantle), which tells the story of an emigrant on his way to a new country, a promised land, as attractive as it is mysterious. The poetic tale of an exodus that touches on the universal. This work was awarded the prize for best album at the Angoulême festival in 2008.