In Paris, an exhibition on post-Covid France seen by 200 photojournalists

France before their eyes. Hundreds of faces and bodies, young and old, photographed in their daily environment in an unequal post-Covid France and tempted by withdrawal into identity: this is the restitution of a major state commission entrusted to 200 photojournalists whose work is on display until June 23 at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), in Paris.

Entitled France under their eyes, this exhibition brings together 450 photographs among the thousands taken by the winners, aged 22 to 82, who publish regularly in the press and were selected by a jury of professionals. The course is made up of “four parts, around the republican motto conjugated in the plural, “Liberties, equalities, fraternities”, to which is added “potentialities”, with reports on the future and the issues linked to ecology, pollution and new technologies,” explains Héloïse Conésa, curator of the exhibition with Emmanuelle Hascoët, to AFP. She “tries to show what, collectively, can allow us to create society today” and begins with “the commitment of young people who were said to be in distress at the end of the health crisis but who are readjusting”, continues -She.

A number of portraits - very few photographs represent groups or communities - speak of this plural search for freedom in mainland France and in overseas territories, of which young people, like the entire population, have been deprived. They evoke an attempt to reclaim this freedom through politics but also the body, sport, love, new sexual identities or religious and spiritual practices. “One of the emblematic photos of the exhibition - chosen for the cover of the catalog - is a young man practicing acrobatics on the slag heaps, a portrait (by Jean-Michel André, editor's note) of youth upside down but who will do everything to get back on their feet,” underlines Héloïse Conésa.

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This post-Covid France talks very little about the virus but more about a damaged, disenchanted country that is looking for new benchmarks in all areas. Territorial inequalities and access to public services, lack of freedoms, cyberharassment, feminicides, difficulties of workers confronted with uberization, but also women fishermen, crack users, prostitutes and bosses in solidarity with undocumented immigrants are some of them themes covered.

Initiated in 2021 by the Ministry of Culture, in line with major photographic commissions such as that carried out by DATAR (Interministerial Delegation for Territorial Planning and Regional Attractiveness) on French landscapes of the 1980s, this one was allocated 5.4 million euros over two years and aimed to support the press industry and photojournalism.