In the news, what happens off-camera is the only thing that should interest a worthy photographer . The communicators, the ones that get a Rolex after 50 years of service, and the people that that pay , don’t like what happens off-camera. Is it so revolting to show those “things that must not be seen”? How ashamed are they ? hide that “it” that isn’t the “it” that Groddeck mentions, and even if “it” is, well, we are kept in left field.

So they talk at us—they’re so vulgar—institutionalizing lies that change every days, juggling unverifiable economic figures to fill their speeches. A few years ago the practice of photography in politics was still possible, we were able to detect the postures, positive and negative. It could show us who a person was, we could move about, searching, and sometimes finding.

No more. The Super-Rolex exterminator has decreed that he only wants one voice, one photo, the good one, the pretty one. Photographers, obey. Stay where you belong. Do not leave the area reserved for the press. , and the candidates stick to it, too, with their brothers and cousins officiating in the area.

Don’t be fooled by what I write, there’s no ambiguity in my words. I’m writing it in the name of the right to move freely, to inform and to take pictures.

This campaign has been a disaster for photographers, only the communicators are in charge and they’re as gutless as usual.

Because this was such a sad week, I’ll share with you a picture of my mother, taken in 1936. She’s the one on the left. Wonderful, isn’t it?

Michel Philippot