In the 1990s, the demise of press photogra-
phy definitely drew photography towards art. The
most interesting pursued a direction inaugurated
by Christian Boltanski, using photo albums, toys,
and personal memories to construct a questioning
of memory and figuration in complex installations;
and by Denis Roche, poet and author, member of
group Tel Quel, who writes aesthetic and metapho-
rical analyses of photography, while composing
visual fictions about himself (self-portraits and
reflexive images). Commissions by private and
public sponsors has also led to new forms of doc-
umentary. Marc Pataut photographs the French
poor while Jean-Luc Moule`ne, in a more formalist
approach, reworks daily objects and places in the
language of conceptual art to foster their reversi-
bility and ambiguity (Poivert 184) changing the
role and nature of the spectator. They may consti-
tute a revival of the social documentary tradition,
through the medium of contemporary art. More
original—but no less ambiguous—is the work of
the many photographers who in the wake of the
huge commission by the national planning agency
DATAR (1983–1989) studied the changing land-
scapes of France under the general title ofThe
Territories of the French.Inspired by the photo-
graphic myth of the Farm Security Administration
and the memory of the Mission He ́liographique of
1851, the DATAR hired photographers to docu-
ment—visually and aesthetically, but not sociolo-
gically—the changing environment of the country
and to educate viewers to its perception. It chose to
contract with artists and, once selected, to leave
them a fairly free hand as to the way they handled
the subject.
Although the project was conducted under the
intellectual supervision of photographer Franc ̧ois
Hers and critic Jean-Franc ̧ois Chevrier, whose able
introduction to the published book tried to inscribe
the survey in the history of art, it was little seen
outside the photographic world, and its results var-
ied greatly in quality and relevance (Doisneau’s
and Depardon’s are among the miscast). The pro-
ject inaugurated a spate of similar smaller ones,
often conducted without much thought and evalua-
tion given to it, and in a somewhat repetitive man-
ner. The reason might have been that although
much poetical thinking about photography was
available in the 1980s and 1990s, there was a rela-
tive paucity of serious scholarly historical tradition
in the field. Very different was a project conducted
by three photographers commissioned by the Plan
urbain to ‘‘accompany’’ the urban development of
three towns in La Re ́union, a French ‘‘departe-
ment’’ in the Indian Ocean. Based on a long col-
laboration with the population (1989–1994) and
a permanent evaluation of their work by outside
sociologists, anthropologists, and critics, the BKL
project is an original and pioneering example of
the revival of a photographic practice combin-
ing the individual and the group, the photogra-
pher and the community, art and action, creation
and testimony.
The interest in landscape photography has been
relatively less marked in France than in the United
States, despite the influence of the New Topogra-
phics group on a younger generation tired of human
interest photography (Jean-Louis Garnell). Results
have often mimicked some of the best American
photography without really opening new vistas, ex-
cept for Eric Dessert.
Despite its apparently varied practices, contem-
porary practice is marked by its autobiographic and
often egoistic tendencies, and a particular attention
to the phenomenon of memory (Poivert 64), para-
doxically leading to its great homogeneity and
repetitive nature.
With the democratization of the photographic
process in the 1920s, photo-clubs, or photo
societies, which had existed since the nineteenth
century, took a great importance in the develop-
ment of photographic practice among amateurs.
Until the 1970s, in the absence of structured
teaching and exhibiting of photography, they
offered the only ‘‘photographic community,’’
especially in the Provinces (every city has a
photo club affiliated to the French Federation
of Photography). They were deeply influenced
by the movement for popular education in work-
ing class environments, although most major
French photographers of the second half of the
century came to photography from an art back-
ground, and many were from a bourgeois milieu
often with independent means, when their
immediate predecessors (‘‘The Humanists’’) had
gone through the trades.
Le Rectangle(created by Emmanuel Sougez in
1937) was a professional and overtly nationalis-
tic—if not slightly xenophobic—reaction against
what was perceived, with the increasing availability
of equipment, as an amateuristic shift of the prac-
tice, and the dangerous competition of Germans
and Central Europeans, who stifled French photo-
graphers (de Thiry 66). It defined itself as ‘‘an
association of French advertising and illustration
photographers...of faultless technician.’’ (de Thiry
66). It was followed by theGroupe des XV(1946–
1957), an association based on much of the same
principles as the former one but with a more experi-
mental and intellectual turn.FRANCE, PHOTOGRAPHY IN