Since its creation, just 50 years ago, Libération has produced tens of thousands of articles, and therefore tens of thousands of photographs. As we celebrate this anniversary, we have chosen to give them to the National Archives, where they will be analyzed, sorted – we wish them good luck –, and above all made free of access to the public.
From the biggest names in photography, such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Raymond Depardon, Françoise Huguier or William Klein, to the biggest collectives, from the VU agency to Magnum, this treasure trove of images represents more than 500,000 photographic prints, including a significant part is unpublished, never published. These photos draw the contours of a contemporary story, of our history. In the words of Bruno Ricard, director of the National Archives: “This endowment immerses us in 50 years of history, but also in 50 years of our lives”.
So, by entering the National Archives, the Libération photographic archives carry out a mutation, from a journalistic temporality towards the long term of history. It’s still very weird for me. Because, what is a newspaper? The boss of the Washington Post during the Watergate affair, Katherine Graham, gave a definition that is taught in all journalism schools: “a newspaper is the first draft of History”, in other words a version which necessarily includes errors, mistakes, too hasty judgments.
In French, we have long said of a press article that we did not like, “tomorrow we will pack fish with it”. The newspaper is therefore not only ephemeral, it is insignificant in the light of History. It is written and photographed to last until the next day, and nowadays, until the next push. A few minutes, at most a few hours.
However, some photos remain in memory for a long time.
Look see
To mark the event, the National Archives organized an exhibition of the best photographs of Libération in their magnificent location, the main courtyard of the Hôtel de Soubise in Paris, in the heart of the Marais. The portraits of Coluche, of Barbara, of Godard, the fall of the Berlin Wall… when we observe these famous front pages, displayed every morning in the newspaper, we can have doubts. No need to be an archivist or an image historian to see straight away that these photos were not taken to disappear the next day, that they were not chosen to be nothing more than a draft of the story.
In a way, I have the idea that these photos were taken by their authors with the idea of being exhibited 50 years later on the walls of the National Archives. It’s now done.
2023-11-13 08:23:06
#Photos #Libé #real #piece #history
