Sophie Jehel: Our first question is about the definition of your work, how do you want to define it? What is your relation to the notion of documentary photography? What interests us is what you include into this term, since it can refer to very different forms.
- 1 Willy Ronis (1909-2009) is a French photographer from the humanist photography movement that aims t (...)
- 2 George Perec (1936-1982) is a French writer, member of the Oulipo group. His work is centred on the (...)
Nadège Abadie: If I had to define my work today, I would say that it is interdisciplinary. The way I articulate and build on my subjects has naturally led me to cinema. Human stories interest me. The particular inhabits the universal and, for me, it is transmitted through words and images, the image being both still and moving. The interview is at the source of many of my works, it is a matter of preparatory work. The man who swept me along into photography—I started in cinema—is Willy Ronis.1 My work tends to have a humanist scope, centred on the ordinariness of our lives, in the “pérecien”2 sense, if I may use this term. And I would also add a real interest in people, a goût des autres, which I got in fact from my family: a keenness for dialogue, debate, and thus necessarily for words and what we do with them. This is how I would define my work.
S.J.: “Do something with them,” what do you mean?
N.A.: Make a concrete object with a proper form, a particular form.
S.J.: Make it visible, turn it into an object?
N.A.: Exactly, turn it into a documentary object.
S.J.: The documentary dimension in your work also comes from your relation to investigation. Is it a preparatory investigation? Or is it done rather at the same time than your production, once you have assessed your terrain?
N.A.: Exactly, the documentary object is made along the way. It is something I’ve become aware of quite recently. I don’t make a film according to a predetermined message... For me, it would be like restraining my vision and the freedom’s expression of the person being filmed and interviewed. That’s definitely not a laboratory work, more a work in progress. It means that I record a lot of the interviews, that I often photograph and film during the research process. My work is often in progress. It takes shape and becomes clearer as I go along, a guiding principle emerges, a perspective is being drawn. But generally, I define hypotheses only at the beginning. And as you say, I assess and constantly listen and adapt... I delineate the terrain within which I will evolve; a terrain that can genuinely fragment depending on the people I encounter.
S.J.: The term hypothesis, inevitably, interests me because it is part of the process in social sciences. But what do you mean by: “I define hypotheses.” Hypotheses which are not messages—that’s what you’ve just said—but which are nevertheless what you seek to see in the remarks made by the people you film?
N.A.: I don’t know if “hypothesis” is the right word, but it’s something that I feel. It is closer to sensation, I see, feel and perceive things, I discern them.
Véronique Figini: Can it be called intuition?
N.A.: That’s it, I have intuitions. Often I have one, sometimes several. What interests me is precisely to confront things without making a demonstration, because I rarely want to make a demonstration. Anyway, I can’t do it because the material I work with is something I don’t control, at least when I’m the recipient. It means either reinforcing or hindering my intuitions. That’s what interests me in the confrontation: to reinforce and validate them, or to hinder and invalidate them; to hamper them against what they convey, as well as through them and my own self. It is certain that intuition is something primordial, not only in language but also in the choice of individuals I encounter and the way they are put into various situations. I often choose the locations of the interviews, where I will film and direct the participants because there is this side of things too that has to do with the mise en scène. It relates too to the documentary work, its creative aspect.
S.J.: For your latest work on women, what was your initial intuition?
N.A.: I’m a woman and the way I look at the world is necessarily the sum of events I’ve lived and gone through. I love observing, it really is the photographic aspect... and obviously I observe women, of any sort, from all ages and social origins. I’ve been looking at them for a while and wanted to create a link between each woman I’ve met, to make what links us visible. Those I approached in the streets and others with whom I spent fifteen hours. My intuition was that we had something in common, which sometimes we had not expected, sometimes was very tenuous or was easily spotted. Something silent, underlying, but which was nevertheless here. This is my initial intuition.
But I had it, I think, because I’m a woman, and because I tend to observe for a long time. I have a strong memory, not an immediate memory, but things imprint themselves in me, from the most insignificant to the most obvious. Things remain, I have a lot of imprints. And so I think that my intuitions emerge because I go deep into those crossing my path.
- 3 Mnemosyne is the Greek goddess of memory. With his “Mnemosyne Atlas” (1929), the art historian Aby (...)
V.F.: Like Mnemosyne?3
N.A.: Yes.
S.J.: This notion of imprint is interesting regarding the choice of photography, the medium of photography. That is to say it’s a little as if you were saying that the material imprints itself within you in the first place.
N.A.: A camera is a sensitive surface—no pun intended—but it has to be sensitive precisely to let the light imprint itself.
V.F.: What is striking in your work is that you’re a keen observer like Willy Ronis. The fact that you cite him is not anodyne. Is it this gift of observation, this gift of empathy that binds you together?
N.A.: Yes, I remember we talked about cinema a lot too.
- 4 Robert Capa (1913-1954) is a French, Hungarian and American photographer. He was one of the foundin (...)
V.F.: Just for the anecdote, Capa4 told Willy Ronis in 1939: “Photography is over, make films.” But in the end, what is your definition of documentary photography? Can Willy Ronis be defined as a documentary photographer?
N.A.: Documentary photography is not fashion photography, or photography of the spectacle. But in fact, it all depends on the way it is read. For example, I’m thinking of the type of photography currently called corporate. If you think of it 50, 60, 70 or 80 years ago, it could be seen as documentary photography. It really is the way you read photography. Anyway, documentary photography is necessarily linked to people, regardless of who they are. I would therefore say that Willy Ronis produced, for sure, documentary photography.
S.J.: It’s precious to have your conception of documentary photography. What I perceive of it is that it is, first of all, a social preoccupation. What interest you are people’s destinies. There is a dimension that is somehow linked to portraiture, in the sense that you get attached to individualities, to singularities: the hairdresser from Magenta or the concierges. I was wondering if you think your work has a critical dimension, and you can define a critical approach as you wish, since they are many of them.
N.A.: A critical approach, what is it? I’m not able to judge or achieve a degree of objectivity because my vision of the world is necessarily laden with everything I’ve lived through. And when you’re sensitive as I am, and sometimes overly sensitive, you experience sensations or feelings from being with the people you meet, at the very moment of what I would roughly call the capture.
Once I’ve gathered this material, the critical dimension may arise during editing, in the way I organise the different voices I recorded, the faces, the moments, because some of the films I make are direct cinema. I necessarily have an opinion on what they recount. I’m not compliant.
I think that it is perhaps at this very moment that the critical dimension arises in my work. It’s sometimes violent for me because people often confide in me, and I use what they tell me to serve the object I create. And with all the kindness of the world, good films are not made with good sentiments. Sometimes, I use what has been said to me to serve the purpose or, in any case, my initial intuition. Here, perhaps, is when I aim for a form of filmmaking that is necessarily critical because I combine things that respond and echo to each other, that overlap and contradict each other. That’s what interests me. I don’t fix anything, I ask questions. I create objects, so that people can meet each other too. They wouldn’t have necessarily met in real life; the book or the film I create, however, is the space where they meet each other and, by extension, the space where they meet the public or the readers.
V.F.: You used the term “confrontation” earlier while in fact it’s a question of encounter. How did you learn this art of editing?
N.A.: I started editing on my own. Later, I worked closely with an editor called Sophie Mandonnet for my first full-length feature. For my latest short film, I worked with the editor Mario Battistel because the idea I had for the film corresponded to him. I enjoy working with different editors, with different sensibilities, adapting the collaboration in relation to the film while remaining loyal throughout the years. I have a rather peculiar way of working, I know by heart all of my rushes. Granted, I didn’t know by heart the hundreds of hours dedicated to women, but it’s me who transcribed most of them, because I had this will to be impregnated by what they told me, by what had happened when they said it to me. I need things to macerate, and then I always have a period of...
V.F.: ...of maturation?
N.A.: ...of maturation, totally. At a certain moment, I go for it, I dive into it, and really I don’t know how it happens. The work strongly depends on the rhythm. The rhythmic dimension is, first of all, a question of form, which is greatly important in what I undertake. This ties in with what I was saying earlier: finding the right form, sometimes even before filming, is very important for me. And even when I take pictures, finding the way to photograph them is primordial.
V.F.: From what I hear, you need ultimately to really appropriate it fully and come through afterwards, to give birth literally to an object.
N.A.: Exactly.
V.F.: It’s a sort of matrix that ties in too with photographic terminology. Your remarks remind me of a quotation from Jean-Jacques Wunenburger who said: “It’s the very nature of images that justifies the choice of one or several types of approaches.” That is to say that one needs not to apply a scheme, but that this scheme should emerge from a heuristic dimension.
N.A.: And the fact of being a passeuse, broadly that things should pass through me. The writer Svetlana Alexievitch would say that she sometimes felt that she was no more than a big ear turned towards the Other: I could make these words my own. Maceration and digestion are slow processes. Something organic is at play here but it’s still me who end up producing it. It goes through me and, in doing so, I shape it.
V.F.: My comment will be completely over the top, but this dimension is a little shamanic, a little mediumistic. You know, some people can captivate, they have a gift and can heal people.
- 5 A film she made in 2017 and can be summarised as such: Océane wants to join the army, Marco wants t (...)
- 6 Entitled Tout ce que je leur dois [Everything I owe them].
N.A.: You could not have put it better, but after watching Le Point de rosée [the dew point]5 and reading the book,6 two individuals told me about the healing dimension of certain moments. For them, there was a form of...
V.F.: ...of care?
N.A.: That’s right, it’s good for you, yes.
V.F.: In this difficulty to designate and define documentary photography, is it not a form of humanist photography in all but name?
N.A.: Yes.
V.F.: Because it has been decried a lot, condemned and completely distorted from its original meaning.
N.A.: Denigrated, yes, exactly.
- 7 An installation created in 2012, introduced as such: “Morning, noon, evening, night. In front of th (...)
S.J.: I’m still not sure about the concierges to whom you dedicated La Loge (2012).7 I wondered why you had filmed them that way. You deal with subjects who are on the margin, people who are seldom visible.
N.A.: Everything is here, it really is as Perec says and writes: it’s not on the margin, it’s here. It’s so much here that you don’t even see it anymore. I mean, old women, people working in the kitchen of palaces, caretakers, churches, the army, people who prepare food, these are people who truly are omnipresent, but we don’t see them, we don’t see them anymore. Reversing the paradigm of the hero is shedding light on these ordinary lives. It makes me think about the poet from Quebec Camille Readman Prud’homme who observes: “When I say nothing, I’m still thinking” (2021). And she adds: “We think that those who don’t speak don’t think, that those who smile are happy; we also think that those who are convinced are right, that those who listen obey.”
I discovered this poet quite recently, what she writes is profoundly accurate, and this quotation is part and parcel of my latest short film, Beshar. So yes, inevitably as you said earlier regarding the choice of my subjects, de facto, there is a critical dimension.
V.F.: Can we return to the issue of choice, of the testimony that will be kept or not?
N.A.: Yes, it’s not easy. I know everything I was told, I imagine everything that I could do with it, but I must choose according to what I want to tell, make visible and transmit. And my way to accept this is to tell myself that it is a work that might well end up spreading over 10 years. The same way as for my film Le Point de rosée, I want to go back and see them in ten years, because a lot of things have evolved: the priest gave up two months before his ordination; the service woman will soon quit the army; and the farmers have become conspiracy theorists, they’ve turned inwards.
S.J.: Does it mean that you stay in touch with some people?
N.A.: Exactly.
- 8 Eugene Smith (1918-1978) is an American photojournalist who was a correspondent during the Second W (...)
- 9 August Sander (1876-1964) is a German photographer who in his great project “20th Century Men” soug (...)
V.F.: Maybe it’s one of the characteristics of this documentary photography, the relation to time, its inscription in duration. The investigations of Eugene Smith,8 of August Sander9 are works created for the long term.
N.A.: Exactly.
V.F.: News photography is not documentary photography. And in this work of... not of renewal, it’s not the right term, but of...
S.J.: Is it the idea of a continuation, of a follow-up?
N.A.: A continuation; regardless of how different we are, bonds are necessarily created. I think that’s what interests me too: what happens in the interstices, in-between projects...
S.J.: Concerning relations, can you tell us what your view is on the use of photos on digital social networks? Do you think the trivialisation of published images on these platforms is having an impact on our relation to photography?
N.A.: Without a doubt. I think there are indeed far too many of them. In fact, once you get past this sort of overdose, it incites you to look closer. We’re not educated enough when it comes to images, that’s what annoys me the most, particularly with the generations that have been confronted from an early age to a whole lot of images, each one more different than the next, but still quite similar. There is no absolute need for critical thinking. What annoys me the most is the flux of images and the fact that it remains a flux. Personally, I don’t use a lot of digital platforms in relation to photography.
I use digital platforms to contact and keep in touch with the persons I work with on photographic or film projects. When I need to look for a certain type of people, Facebook for example is quite magical from this point of view. Having said that, I removed all the applications from my phone. I’m not on X anymore, nor on Facebook, I don’t have Instagram anymore because I felt that it was the only thing I would look at, compulsively. I didn’t look beyond the screen of my phone anymore. It was really embarrassing.
I did a shooting during which a young person I was talking to didn’t look at me. So I thought: “If I transposed...” He was staring at his phone as if reading a magazine or a book. And I told myself: if I just changed the phone and the boy would read his magazine as I talked to him, it would...
S.J.: ...it would shock you?
N.A.: There you go, these little things made me aware that I was in fact looking at a lot of images, in particular on Instagram, but that I wasn’t doing much with them.
S.J.: For instance, can you tell us about an image you have recently seen?
N.A.: Recently, for me, it is what’s happening in Iran. It’s giving back a certain nobility to social networks. The massive dissemination of images that are not supposed to be seen outside the country; they are profoundly free, liberated through their sharing on social networks. Then I went back on Twitter/X.
S.J.: To finish, we would like to discuss the work we lead together in the sociophotography laboratory, and listen to your point of view on what makes sense to you and to your thoughts on the value of such a tutorial programme. That is to say, meeting students from different educational backgrounds, but also the visual and textual production based around these digital subjects and the social impact of digital technology.
N.A.: I find it very interesting because they are in fact immersed in it. Moreover, whether they work in groups of two or three, but come from two very different disciplines, it’s brilliant. It’s essential to be able to work in teams in a course, with people with whom you will have to work at some point. It’s very rich. Then the field of study within which they work, both separately and together, they are born in it. They don’t necessarily have a critical view on what they will tackle. However, the fact that they are forced to conduct field investigations, to unravel the system, its functioning, its flaws, its strong points—not necessarily to denigrate it, but in any case to examine its workings behind closed doors—I think it’s the most interesting thing. What is sometimes difficult is that they take what they see a little at face value, but in their approach—at least when they explain to you what they’re going to do—the field of enquiry is very concrete.
I’ve sometimes been a little disappointed, perhaps because they were too polluted by their own use of social networks. I think they need to be encouraged to be more incisive for the purpose of the investigation, so as to foster a true reflection. Often, students in photography take relatively few documentary pictures, or they use pictures found on these networks. This year, I’m trying to push them a little bit more, just like the student who leads the research will get in touch with the influencer or the person behind the account.
S.J.: Do you mean a less fictional dimension...?
V.F.: More anchored in reality?
N.A.: More in real life.
S.J.: Ah, this notion of fiction, it’s...
N.A.: Concerning fiction, I told myself “not in a million years.” The demiurgic aspect fascinated and terrified me. But it turns out that I’ve currently reached the limits of documentary. I think I will continue to make documentaries, although I’m in the process of writing my first fiction.
Photographie 1
“Irène Savignon,” Tout ce que je leur dois [Everything I owe them].
Alt text: Irène Savignon is a 93-year-old woman smoking a cigarette. The photography is vertical and shows her face and the top of her body, the background is blurred: gold and dark towards the bottom. She takes a drag on her cigarette and her eyes are fixed on the camera’s lens. Her hair is short and white with a few grey strands. She is wearing a long sleeve top with stripes in red and grey which is slightly see-through and reveals a white lace bra. Her nails are varnished, she wears make-up and her fine eyebrows are tattooed on a skin dotted with age spots and wrinkled by the weight of years. Her light green eyes and her gaze are piercing. The back of the chair on which she seats can be slightly seen on the left side of the photography.
Author: Nadège Abadie, 2019.
Photographie 2
“Beshar Barwari,“ Silences d’exils [Silences of exile].
Alt text: Beshar Barwari is a 37-year-old man who looks much older. He is Kurdish and comes from Iraq. He stares at the camera’s lens. His expression is neither happy, nor sad. He doesn’t smile and one could say that his eyes have a hint of melancholy. His face takes up a lot of space in this vertical photography, the top of his body disappears in the darkness already present in the background. One can just about guess that he is wearing a dark shirt because its collar stands out around his neck. The photograph is in colour but the tones are mainly grey and dark. A halo appears over the entire surface of the photograph, as well as a light grain creating a powdery effect all over his face and causing a gradual disappearance of its contours in the dark and uniform background.
Author: Nadège Abadie, 2016.