With photographic orientations, Arnaud Claass continues his exploration of real images and mental images. His writing mixes observations from daily life and considerations on the art of seeing. He envisages the diversity of gaze practices as a celebration of things, as journalism or social commitment, as a museum ambition or on the contrary as deliberate indifference towards the artistic institution.

Addressing contemporary work as well as pioneering works of historical modernities, he questions the unclassifiable strangeness of photography, his ability to say the enigma of the world, and paradoxically to resist the surge of images. He meditates in passing on recent theoretical texts by authors already on the way to becoming classics.

At the end of the volume, the reflections on the Vivian Maier case offer a careful reading of the photographer’s work, examining its stylistic aspects as well as the exciting problems raised by its revelation and its diffusion.