Augure

Augure is a visual essay on news photography of the 1960s and 1970s, created from press clippings taken from a leading news magazine of the period. The series juxtaposes commercial imagery with reportage photography to reflect on the dual nature of photographic practice and the influence of advertising on our collective imagination.

At a time when French television was still a state monopoly (officially remaining so until 1982), and radio and the printed press were the dominant media, weekly magazines represented, for many photojournalists, a professional consecration, offering large-format, full-colour publications. The print press was equally a boon for advertisers, who saw in this broad format, and in the promise of striking reportage, an ideal space for advertising.

By bringing together often violent images of conflicts with equally direct representations of the products and precepts of consumer society, Augure revisits an ambiguous and crucial period for the future of photography. The notion of photographic objectivity gradually gave way to the recognition of the photographer as an author, while the growing presence of advertising images patiently shaped readers into future consumers. Within this schizophrenic environment, accounts of major geopolitical events—decolonisation, the Vietnam War, May 1968, the Prague Spring, and others—appeared alongside advertisements for a DS, an electric razor or a vacuum cleaner, while the faces of political leaders became indistinguishable from those of film stars. The boundary between information and communication grew increasingly blurred, and history began to be written through events that are difficult to classify as historical fact, promotional content, or mere anecdote.

By reinterpreting the visual seduction of a bygone era, Augure plays with visual associations to suggest that, even today, history is less a matter of framing than of montage. A semiotic puzzle, the series can be read—in the manner of the Greek and Roman priests—as a game of interpreting signs and symbols extracted from the entrails of the press.