The last of these posts was published on June 7. More than two weeks without writing a single line. On my wall, yes—of course—because what I tend to write there is mostly about lived experience: the emotions they provoke, and the sediment they leave behind. A release, nothing more. Nothing to analyze.

And yet, these reflections are as vital to me as food. They nourish me in the same way, and their absence causes a comparable hunger. Though I’m not quite settled yet, I want to begin, little by little, to comment on some of the images that have caught my attention. Lightly, as a way of stepping back onto the dance floor without stumbling.

A bit of context ( No recuerdo si te pregunté si podías poner negritas o bold en determinados segmentos del texto, como en este caso )

In the spring of 2024, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP) hosted the exhibition Extérieurs: Annie Ernaux & la Photographie. Annie (France, 1940) is a renowned writer whose deeply autobiographical work explores memory, everyday life, and the social structures that shape them. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2022, at the age of 82.

Her texts inspired curator and writer Lou Stoppard, based in London, to explore the resonances between Ernaux’s literary voice and photography. During a one-month residency at the MEP in Paris, Stoppard selected the work of 29 photographers for the exhibition. The title, Extérieurs, is borrowed from Ernaux’s celebrated book Journal du dehors (1993), published in English as Exteriors, which weaves together many of the themes echoed in the works on display: the mundane flow of city life—commutes, purchases, meals, leisure—in its broadest sense.

Stoppard’s aim, as she herself explained, was not only to establish connections between Ernaux’s writing and photography, but to recreate the emotional residue left by the experience of an ordinary day in the city.

One photograph in particular, taken by Janine Niepce in 1965, is titled Social housing in Vitry. A mother and her child. It has belonged to the MEP collection since 1983.

Stoppard recounts that when she presented the selection to Ernaux, the author was curiously drawn to Niepce’s work. She felt a kinship—a parallel in their themes and sensibilities. The two women are near contemporaries and both witnessed the sweeping transformations of French culture: the arrival of television, the acceleration of public transportation. Each showed a particular interest in capturing the contrasts between rural and urban life, as well as the real and imagined distance between the periphery and the capital—Paris, in this case. One of the central tensions in Journal du dehors is precisely the sense of disconnection between Cergy-Pontoise, where Ernaux lives, and Paris.

According to the curator, the image of the mother and child resonated with the many ways in which Ernaux has explored the complexities and constraints of motherhood. Ernaux was struck by the divergence in their gazes: the child looks at his mother, while the mother looks out into the world. That divergence reveals the quiet barriers of routine, of limited freedom, that so often prevent us from fully seeing or engaging with the world around us. For Stoppard, Ernaux’s reaction clarified something: Journal du dehors is, in a way, a document of emancipation. Divorced and no longer consumed by the demands of raising small children, Ernaux allowed herself to become immersed in observation—to move, to drift along the margins of reality, to be moved, to look and respond, to be truly present in the world.

If I chose to continue down this path, it wasn’t because I found the photograph particularly exceptional. Far from it. One among thousands. Can you imagine how many mothers there are in the world, child in arms, gazing out at whatever world lies beyond the veil of motherhood?

A theme too delicate. Beautiful, even—almost iridescent, like sunlight on a pond. And not one into which I wish to dip my toe.

In doing the small amount of research that precedes each of these posts, I ran up against one of the most prevalent tendencies of our time: the impulse to convert every testimony—whether verbal or visual—into the concrete expression of a position, a cluster of ideas someone is eager to assert, defend, or even impose.

I’ll expand on that in a second post… even I get tired of rereading my own words to hunt down the vermin between the lines.