The National School of Photography is the only art school in France fully dedicated to the photographic medium, and its annual magazine sends a message to all enthusiasts. The publication explores their preferred medium, which is actually the most popular of all, from various angles: What is its place today, in a world where imagery is in flux and evolving all the time? What are the topical and untopical questions it poses? What relationships does it have with art, current affairs, writing and memory? What is its place in the long history of imagery? How can it be taught? How can knowledge and appreciation of it be fostered? The magazine seeks out pictures and writing that consider these issues and lead us along new paths towards new perspectives. It embraces photography
being published for the first time, most of it by talented young practitioners. Like them, it sees the importance of not being flattened by fashions; of looking elsewhere, beyond our usual ways of seeing and understanding, courtesy of translations; and of taking stock while staying mobile and keeping our ears and eyes open on our world, on what unsettles it but also what confers its relative stability. Photography, which is Infra-Mince (infra-slim) by definition, finds in this dedicated magazine a home for everything that makes it both close and distant, obvious and mysterious, common and preciouse. The two exhibitions being staged to showcase its contents are supplemented, for the Rencontres’ opening week, by a presentation at the library of the National School of Photography. Each venue will display the four issues already published; the Actes Sud bookshop will show the photographs extracted from their magazine and printed on substrates of what is as yet a highly unusual kind.
