What do we see in the photograph—what is it, in fact, that the curator, the writer, the director of the MEP, and the readers of these reflections want to see?

The image—taken by Janine in Vitry, in 1965—functions as a diptych that articulates two registers: one intimate, the other collective. On the left, we see the urban landscape of a social housing block. It stands as a record of postwar France’s modernizing policies: basic, functionalist architecture designed to reorganize working-class life on the suburban fringes. Good luck with that.

To the right, the portrait of a mother and her child at the threshold of a window. Here, Janine introduces a second dimension—emotional and subjective. The child seeks his mother’s gaze, while she looks outward, in a gesture that reveals both exhaustion and a quiet desire to escape. From an ethnographic perspective, the image suggests the tension between a woman’s traditional role in the domestic sphere and an emerging need for presence in public life. Psychologically, it can be read as an expression of maternal ambivalence, mental burden, and the emotional distance that sometimes arises even within the closest of bonds. It is an ambitious image that—without straining—documents a historical moment while subtly evoking the internal complexities of those who inhabit it. If one image can carry two testimonies—complementary or not—why take a second?

This path, while correct and elegantly constructed, amounts to an intellectual walk around the block.

Annie Ernaux’s interest in this artist—and in this image in particular—seems to stem from a sense of recognition: the belief that she sees in Niepce’s narratives the very conditions she herself left behind. The invisible circles that once constrained her vitality, reinforced by a silent sense of responsibility she ultimately managed to break through. It was only later in life, in her own words, that she began to feel free and fluid. Whether that liberation came by her own will or by the momentum of life remains unclear.

We are speaking, of course, solely of the constraints imposed by motherhood. Of half the photograph.

But aren’t limitations inherent to its condition? There could be millions of similar images, from every angle, in every imaginable setting—hundreds of millions, thousands even—of a baby gazing adoringly at his mother while she stares into the distance. And if the photographer waits two seconds longer, they’ll capture just as many images of an unbreakable connection.

When I look at a photograph, I try to reconstruct the moment in which it was taken. A scene comes to mind from that luminous film starring—and directed by—Ben Stiller, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Sean Penn plays a supporting but pivotal role: the enigmatic photographer Sean O’Connell, working for LIFE magazine.

In one of the film’s key scenes, Walter climbs to a remote Himalayan summit, guided by locals, after days spent chasing the elusive O’Connell across the globe. He finds him sitting quietly with his camera set up, eye pressed to the viewfinder, waiting.

Walter approaches without speaking and sits beside him. The landscape is vast, silent, and snow-covered. They gaze in the same direction. Without turning, Sean whispers that he’s waiting to catch a rare glimpse of the snow leopard—a creature so elusive it’s known there as the Ghost Cat.

Then, out of nowhere, it appears—distant, spectral, between rocks and snow. Sean doesn’t move. Walter watches in awe. And then, something unexpected: Sean doesn’t take the shot. Walter, confused, asks why. Sean answers calmly:

“Sometimes I don’t. If I like a moment… I don’t like to have the distraction of the camera. I just want to stay in it.”

That scene reveals the essence of contemplation. Instead of capturing the moment, he chooses to live it. They remain there, in silence, sharing the purity of the experience. Without interference. Without limitation.

Why do I think of that film now? Perhaps because in order to take an almost impossible photograph, the photographer had to remain still for countless hours, enduring harsh conditions and freezing winds—whatever it took to catch a glimpse of a ghost. For him, the sacrifice is worthwhile.

Is that the kind of photo a mother of a small child could have taken? No way. Sorry.

How do we imagine Janine Niepce captured this particular moment? An intimate fragment that illustrates what we’ve already discussed: a connection briefly suspended, stirred by a longing for the world beyond—an adventure, perhaps. Did Janine wait on the balcony, in the sun, until mother and child appeared? Did she consciously distribute two of the cardinal pillars of her visual poetics across the frame with near-mathematical precision? Doesn’t it feel a little… staged?

I’m trying to condense three ideas into one text, and it’s starting to show.

Motherhood is the primary condition of our species. It multiplies us. For these words to exist, a prolonged form of motherhood had to evolve—capable of sustaining the development of a cognitive organ as complex as the human brain. In the meantime, what emerges is a constant, ferocious vigilance designed to protect that potential and keep it from being lost. There is no other way.

I decline to enter other narratives and themes also embedded in this photograph. Not even the idea of motherhood as a limiting factor—though it certainly is—within the broader, rapidly shifting framework of gender equality. I don’t want to intellectualize the image of a mother with her child, to interfere with a bond so fragile.

When I read the accompanying essay and consider Annie Ernaux’s life experience—and the curator’s urgency in constructing a conceptual framework that satisfies both the author and the institution—I begin to understand how a seemingly simple photo, one that might differ from a mobile phone snapshot only in the strength of its central axis, can be imbued with a complexity it may not entirely possess.

So I wonder: what would Sean O’Connell do in this case?

Would he take the picture... or would he simply let the moment unfold?