"The Centre National de la Photographie presents" "One Minute for One Image" "I know this image, it's from the Army archives." "The photographer kept the negatives in a drawer for 20 years." "It was the Algerian war, he'd been drafted." "This woman and the other villagers had to pose for him for the obligatory ID cards that were being issued." "So, he had been drafted, and she was obliged to remove her veil." "The violence against both individuals is particularly visible in the incredible defiance of the woman." "If her messy hair gives the impression of pain, emotion, agitation... the tightness in her face, her bitter frown and the startling anger in her expression all say NO." "She may take an order, but she will not be subjugated." "I'm moved by this woman's face... and by this photographer who, in doing his dirty army work, managed to capture a truth about what was going on." "Comments by Agnès Varda (filmmaker)" "On a photograph by Marc Garanger" "(Algerian Woman, 1960)" "I have a slew of strong impressions." "X-rated movies, La Pieta, Social Security, the Oedipus complex, elderly women and love, incognito women, and a boy showing his penis." "Strange collage." "I'll start over." "X-rated movies." "Masked eyes suggesting restricted viewing." "In this case, the women are forbidden to look at the pubescent boy." "Social Security." "They're waiting for their checks, these brave women in sensible shoes, mostly widows, aging for ages." "They're clutching what's left, a son or a grandson." "They've got him, but where did he get his laughing eyes and long feet?" "La Pieta." "In the Avignon Pieta, the son's arm hangs straight down." "Here there are four madonnas, and baby Jesus doesn't want to sleep." "Sleep, baby Jesus, close your eyes otherwise you'll get black tape over your eyes too, and two strips over your genitals like a cross right in the middle of the image, where the cross in the lens" "focused this picture." "Comments by Agnès Varda (filmmaker)" "On a photograph from her imaginary album" "Gérard Marot (Collages, 1983)" "I'm thinking of a Kurt Weill song from The Threepenny Opera but I only know a few words, and in French." "A great ocean liner slowly and silently will slip into the harbor" "This is really a liner, a great ocean liner." "The other one, nearly identical, is more of a steamship." "I know this photo and its title, so I know this woman's name is Bibi." "It's funny, in French "bibi" is slang for a woman's hat." "She looks upset, or possibly nauseous." "In a moving boat it's better not to smoke." "People often get nauseous in ports, rocking in place." "And I know the photo was taken in Marseilles." "When I was young my first solo trip left from Marseilles." "I was running away." "I'm picturing myself on deck, asleep in a nice coil of rigging." "I had a deck ticket, I was thrilled to be on a liner." "A great ocean liner..." "Comments by Agnès Varda (filmmaker)" "On a photograph by Jacques-Henri Lartigue" "(Bibi in Marseilles, 1928)" "Photographie J.H. LARTIGUE Copyight Ministère de la Culture" " France / A.A.I.H.L." "Hands, hands everywhere." "Six in total." "But only one, the middle one, is naked and open." "This is open-hand surgery." "The other hands wear delicate gloves, almost like a second skin." "These hands work to repair, heal and sew up the naked hand, so it may live again." "We have the passive hand and the active hands." "We are reminded of the humanist clichés:" ""All the human hand can do"" ""To work hand in hand"" ""To lend a helping hand"" "Here helping hands help a hand." "We're reminded that victims and executioners have the same hands." "We recall the stigmata on Christ's hands." "I'm also reminded of a Baudelaire poem." "I am the wound and the knife The victim and the executioner" "I believe the poem is called Heautontimoroumenos." "Comments by Agnès Varda (filmmaker)" "On a photograph from her imaginary album" "André Martin (Hand Operation, 1968)" "I like that this image reminds me of Dutch School paintings." "The houses, the doors, the perspectives and the light, illuminating relationships." "This is a family portrait, a prototype." "A caricature of the child as king." "He's the subject of the photograph, he and his father." "The mother is obscured by leaves, and the grandmother is way in the back." "I suppose the white-haired woman is the grandmother." "Anyway they're all looking at this child in baggy knickers, the pride and future of the family." "For me the subject is also the house, the dark area between the two doors, and the heaviness of the areas without light." "Houses reveal a lot about families, families reveal what they choose, and photographs reveal a bit of the mystery in what no one wants to reveal." "Comments by Agnès Varda (filmmaker)" "On a photograph by Jenny De Vasson" "(Varennes, circa 1913)" " This is anytime." " This is senseless." "Dead bodies in a heap, rats in a pile." "It feels like they might start moving again." "They were told, "Get moving, boys!" "Sing for victory and peace!"" "They are in peace, with brotherhood forced upon them." "At the top left there is a living soul." "We see two feet walking, two legs in pants." "He's leaving, understandably, it's disgusting." "I look at images such as this one to remind myself where I am, to remind myself who I am." "It raises a fundamental question, because it's an image with nice textures, delicate shades of black, white and gray." "So, what is beauty, what is art, when we know we are looking into a mass grave?" "Every one of these corpses was a person, with a point of view and opinions, and who would say, like us, either:" "This is beautiful, or this is ugly." "Comments by MONORYVARDA (artists)" "On a photograph by W. Eugene Smith" "(Tarawa, 1943)" "Well hello, Mr. Fish!" "Don't you look good!" "Aren't you stylish!" "I don't think this is a fable or even an allegory." "It's very realistic." "It's the slimy sensation of a fish in your hand." "A sensation that moves faster than the speed of photography." "I'm intrigued by the character on the right, who has one small, birdlike hand, whereas the other is a gaping fish, a miniature shark." "I'm not sure it's threatening." "It could be a game of hands." "Rock, paper, scissors." "But the big hand, reaching out with its dubious joviality, is headed for something sinister." "And the tiny hand is the most dangerous." "I really love this image, full of reverie and fright." "It reminds me of surrealism, which to me is a space and a time to dream beyond reality's extraordinary precision." "A space around reality and its images." "Comments by Agnès Varda (filmmaker)" "On a photograph from her imaginary album" "Juan Fontcuberta (Self-Portrait, Barcelona, 1972)" "This is like a shiver of love." "Here two beings touch, embrace, and the air quivers, leaves fall, birds take flight." "Here, in one minute, is an afternoon delight." "The four seasons and the three ages of life pass in a myriad of positions and starry visions." "This image is both the tranquility of a comfy couch and the flux of amorous transport, in the blurry movement of one of the lover's thick hair." "They are ambiguous, we see no breasts or genitals." "But their intertwined limbs reveal a hairy male leg blending into a creamy female thigh." "We can deduce nothing." "The only visible face is calm." "It is the unreal hair, a disheveled blur, that speaks of passion." "We back away discretely." "The afternoon will soon end, the leaves will fall to the earth, the hair will come into focus." "He will resemble a man and she a woman." "The hour of love will have passed." "But right now they're still vibrating." "Comments by Agnès Varda (filmmaker)" "On a photograph from her imaginary album" "Gladys (Couch Series, No. 6, 1978)" "We're lined up by height, not age." "Jean, Pierre, Marcelle, Gaby, Christiane (me)," "Germaine, René, Gilbert, Edouard, France," "Eric, Alain, Dany and Ginette, Dad and Mom." "They were very much in love." "Dad was very gay, very merry, clever and witty." "Mom was very sweet, she always sang while she sewed." "And she did very well, she had wonderful pregnancies." "We were a very close family." "How touching, a family touching shoulders." "And how touching, three same-sized sisters, but how troubling that the middle one, my mother, isn't looking at me." "They all look at the camera, except two women, my mother and her mother." "They both look in the same direction," "I don't know what they see, but if something passes down through women," "I should go look there, find out what it is." "Comments by Christiane Varda (no profession)" "And Agnès Varda (her daughter)" "On a photo by anonymous from her imaginary album" "(Faucille Hill, circa 1915)" "Niki de Saint-Phalle's sculptures come to mind." "Those big, pneumatic women whose limbs taper off delicately." "But Niki's colors and good cheer are missing." "This image is more tragic." "The man gestures theatrically, as if conjuring fate." "It feels like it's happening at the mouth of a volcano, though it's surely just a wrestling match and the people burning in hell are simply spectators." "And the wrestlers are lady wrestlers, strong, champion wrestlers." "Female mud wrestling is highly popular in the United States." "One may wonder why this is so." "A mix of sport, female flesh and mud." "The reasons are mixed, a bit dubious, a bit muddy." "In any case I'm not going, I won't go." "But the image is alluring." "These buoyant women, covered in mud, are reassuring." "Even the one who's screaming upside-down." "The other one's arms are a life buoy." "Her arms and hands are like seaweed braids." "We're looking at a big, fat, wet shape." "Times two." "Comments by Agnès Varda (filmmaker)" "On a photograph from her imaginary album" "Bill Greene (Quincy, Mass.)" "Can violence be stopped with a flower?" "That is the question asked by this utopian image from the 1960s, the age of the Flower Children far from Vietnam." ""Peace and Love", "U.S. Go Home..."" "The Vietnam war was a horror, and a metaphor." "I remember that era very well, and this particular photograph." "It is admirable in its simplicity." "On one side are war, helmets, bayonets and men, voluntarily or not, being soldiers." "On the other side is peace, a radiant flower and a woman in a flowery blouse." "A woman resisting." "Calmly and silently resisting." "In the background are blurry lights vital movement frozen during this confrontation." "We've often heard, "To arms, citizens!"" ""The revolution is in the barrel of a gun!"" ""If you want peace, prepare for war!"" "It's too simple to say men love and crave war, while women love and crave peace." "But I like that this image suggests that, and dares to present a flower in a naked hand as the very embodiment of resistance to violence." "Comments by Agnès Varda (filmmaker)" "On a photograph from her imaginary album" "Marc Riboud (The Girl with the Flower, Washington, 1967)" "I'll try to see this image for the first time." "I'm startled by the black eye in the middle." "Despite logic, that eye doesn't seem to belong to the nearby hand." "A black eye like a black hole on a bit of broken mirror." "Like a hen's eye with a lower lid that shuts." "It looks like it's on a tray, like that Saint I don't remember in that old painting I don't remember." "The other hand reaches for a lipstick resembling a cartridge." "The hand will put it in the wallet with the bills and change." "A broken mirror signifies death to the superstitious." "I don't see death here." "I see the broken mirror, like a broken self." "Not the physical self but memory, broken memories, fragments that don't fit, like an editing mistake in a film." "Let's talk briefly about cinema." "Sometimes cinema seems like an animated photograph." "This is an arrested film." "This is an instant from Cleo from 5 to 7." "We don't see Cleo, we don't see 5 or 7 o'clock." "Here I'm letting it run 1/24th of a second." "Comments by Agnès Varda (filmmaker)" "On a photograph from her imaginary album by Liliane De Kermadec (Shooting Cleo from 5 to 7, 1961)" "The walls and ink of China are famous." "They're beautiful like paintings." "And Zao Wou-Ki's paintings are beautiful like walls." "This wall is the subject of the photo and the backdrop to a curious, joyous scene." "On the right are three children, round as apples, having fun." "One hangs on his friend's neck." "His friend reaches up like he's suffocating, but it's a game." "It's that brutal tenderness expressed by boys the world over in the same tactile, benign way." "In addition to this gray-green wall, which sets off the subtle blues and greens of the clothes, there is a fourth musketeer, charging into the scene." "The wind or his sword have lifted his coat." "His outstretched hand is an odd shape, like a big comb or a wood saw or a musical saw." "His other hand is a green circle, a box, a ball, a big green pea." "All is serenely surprising here." "The wall is like a bygone sky, a landscape with figures." "Comments by Agnès Varda (filmmaker)" "On a photograph from her imaginary album" "Nurith Aviv (January 1983)" "These small images are a bit daring, a bit erotic, and very enjoyable to look at." "The bodies are colors, the limbs shapes, the gestures movements." "Faces are hidden, eyes too." "It's a story of bodies, bodies moving, moving bodies." "We can see there is a mirror, and an automatic camera that spits out images, the famous little Polaroid." ""Polar" in French evokes detective novels, film noir." "These prints are evidence, clues, fingerprints." "Catching oneself in the act with a photo, in a mirror or at arm's length, reveals a desire to take." "And a minute later the image is revealed." "A minute of patience for an image." "It's unique and it's private." "No need to have it developed by a lab, no risk of others' giggles, guffaws, dirty winks or saucy remarks." "Here we can be alone, or among friends." "Here we get an eyeful, like the very first time." "This is innocent eroticism, heavenly voyeurism." "Hell is other people." "Other people and their comments." "Comments by Agnès Varda (filmmaker)" "On a photograph from her imaginary album" "Bob Gould (Spring in Paris, 1983)" "English Adaptation by Sionann O'Neill" "Subtitling TITRA FILM Paris"