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“Regards de photographes” (La Découverte) brings together photos from Agence France Presse to show what we already know, but as we have never seen it.

The title, Photographers’ viewsis in the plural: the photographers in question are those of AFP, Agence France Presse, which provides media around the world with information in the form of dispatches, but also photos. Those gathered here make a very strong impression. They were taken all over the world last year and this year.

There are images that speak to us immediately, the one on the cover for example: we see a soldier in a field covered in snow. He launches a drone with the strength of his arm, his gaze stretched towards the sky, we guess that he is Ukrainian. Ukraine returns regularly throughout the pages, as does the Middle East, with striking snapshots.

However, this book is not a retrospective, rather a dizzying stroll through the world around us, a stroll that shakes up our bearings and our certainties.

Faced with the clichés, no caption, they are all grouped together at the end of the book. At first, we just know when and where the photos were taken, but the best thing is to simply look at the images. There, if we try to guess what is happening, the country concerned, we are often very surprised.

For example, there is this shirtless man covered in silver paint who stares at us behind his sunglasses. The scene was captured on the street in Indonesia. There is also this somewhat disturbing family posing in front of their wooden house with clothes from another century. They look like pioneers of the conquest of the West. Yet this is happening in Peru today.

And when we read the explanations, we understand everything that a photo can say about a society or a way of life that is foreign to us.

I think, for example, of these children running on a beach, running towards the sea with their multicolored buoys and obvious happiness. This is a joyful scene, which one would not instinctively place… in North Korea.

In the photo, you can also guess, behind the children, large gray buildings, a tourist complex recently built by the North Korean dictatorial regime with a diplomatic objective.

There is meaning, there is beauty in these dozens of images. We are baffled, we learn a lot of things, so it is, as you will have understood, a very recommendable book.

Photographers’ viewspublished by La Découverte.