‘The Use of Photography’ by Annie Ernaux and Marc Marie: A material representation of lovemaking

More than two decades after two classics on the subject of photography, Susan’s Sontag’s On Photography (1977), and Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida (1980, in French), the French Nobel Laureate Annie Ernaux’s The Use of Photography (co-written with the late French photographer and journalist, Marc Marie) was published in the original French in 2005, and in English translation by Alison L Strayer in 2024. Sontag’s is a historical and sociological examination of the role played by photography in 1970s America. While Sontag’s critical exploration is objective, Barthes’ narrative is pensive and personal. There are no photographs in Sontag’s book, while Barthes often used photographs to illustrate an argument or reading.

After love

The Use of Photography introduces interesting departures from Sontag and Barthes. The presence and meaning of the human face are central to Barthes’ observations on photography, and the photographs in the book accentuate it. In striking contrast, Eranux’s project in collaboration with her lover, Marie, keeps the human body – or the human object in photographs – out of the scene. For Ernaux, the photographs taken by Marie and her were meant to “preserve images of the devastated landscape that remains after lovemaking.” Annie and her lover were not satisfied with making love and “needed to preserve a material representation...

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