8 - Picturing a Nation of Local Places in the Observatoire photographique du paysage and France(s) territoire liquide

Summary

‘To live is to live locally and know first of all the place one is in’

– Edward Casey (1996: 18)

The phenomenon of the French photographic mission, whereby a collective of artists charged with documenting the nation's shared common spaces traverse the territory with cameras in tow, has recently begun to attract the attention of scholars. And with good reason. For the history of French photography has been marked by the preponderance of group-based projects. From the famed Mission héliographique of 1851 to the increasingly appreciated Mission photographique de la DATAR, 1984–89 (see Edward Welch's article in this volume). And from lesser-known initiatives like the Mission photographique transmanche, sponsored by the Centre Nationale de la Photographie Nord-Pas-de- Calais and focusing, from 1998 to 2005, on the regional impact of the construction of the Channel Tunnel, to even more inclusive programmes that gather, disseminate, and reflect upon the work of amateur photographers, like the FNAC-sponsored photo competition C’était Paris en 1970, or Mon paysage: le paysage préféré des français, by which the French Ministry for the Environment brought together in 1992 some 9,000 images submitted by residents throughout France of places they hold dear. It seems clear that these ventures, in the breadth of their coverage and in the spirit of their imagination, have much to tell us about the role that landscape occupies in the national imaginary. They also suggest how representation of the nation's spaces is central to conversations about development, politics, ecology, and identity in modern and contemporary France. The prevalence of missions photographiques testifies to the extent to which French cultural, administrative, and commercial institutions have joined forces, and have been doing so for years, to support documentary landscape photography as a vehicle for thinking deeply about the past, present, and future shape of the nation.

What follows is an appraisal of two of the most recent and most compelling photographic missions that set out to engage these issues and, in doing so, render the physical contours of the Hexagon intelligible in ways that other media, like literary narrative and cartography, cannot.