La montée des circonstances

Edition created by Farid Abdelouahab, Guillaume Geneste, Francoise Roche.
Firstly known for his literary work, Denis Roche is also a major figure of the contemporary photography. As a ‘Photographer-writer’, he creates a continuous dialogue between the two arts, each having an intrinsic value for him. He also thinks constantly about the photographic practice and produces articles, books and radio interviews about his relationship to the medium.

Organized in thematic chapters, the book highlights Denis Roche’s key subjects: ‘The compelling need for structures, lines, forms, his obsession for the passage of time, the machine, the process … For Denis Roche, the photographic act is ‘something serious’, something meaningful, the photo figures time and is carries silence.

The book brings together a wide choice of images, some of them well-known, others less, and it integrates a dozen of unpublished photographs: portraits, self-portraits, shattered landscapes, still lifes, photomontages … These photographs are laid out with a choice of texts from Denis Roche’s most famous books on photography – La photographie est interminable (Photography is endless), La disparition des lucioles (The disappearance of fireflies) , Dépôts de savoir et de technique (Deposits of knowledge and technique) – and articles or extracts of radio interviews. Thus, these texts come to illuminate his artistic process, and reveal the singular meaning he gives to images.

The coordinators: Farid Abdelouahab is art historian, curator and writer; Guillaume Genest, from the photographic lab La chamber noire, he used to make the prints for Denis Roche. They both made the choice of the images and excerpts and wrote the accompanying texts.