Exteriors
Annie Ernaux and Photography
Lou Stoppard
Exteriors is originally a record by Annie Ernaux of various moments of contemporary life in and around Cergy-Pontoise between 1985 and 1992. Cergy-Pontoise is a ‘new town’ built around Paris in the 1960s.
Annie Ernaux (born 1940) is a French writer who won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature. Ernaux’s goal is to write as if making photographs. Her literary work is mostly autobiographical.
Lou Stoppard is a curator who combined Ernaux’s texts with photographs from the Maison Européenne de la Photographie’s (MEP) collection by photographers including Harry Callahan, Daido Moriyama, Issei Suda and Henry Wessel.
In her book Exteriors, Annie Ernaux looks at how people behave in public spaces. And what she thinks about it. Exteriors, a relative short book, is now availabe in shortened form with photographs added. The photographs are assembled from the collection of the MEP (Maison Européenne de la Photographie) in Paris.
Ernaux’s observations were made in Paris. The assembled photographs were made in different cities. But the photographs show the same sense of alienation and loneliness as the texts of Annie Ernaux. Indicating that these feelings of alienation and loneliness are not only tied to Paris but are universal. People withdraw in themselves and build a walle around themselves. There is little social interaction in public spaces.
Exteriors: Annie Ernaux and Photography
Edited by Lou Stoppard
Published by Mack and MEP in 2024
Silkscreened hardcover with tipped-in image
15 x 21 cm, 144 pages
Texts by Annie Ernaux and Lou Stoppard
Photograps by various artists from the MEP-collection
Shortlisted for the 2024 Photo-Text Book Award at the Les Rencontres de la Photographie Festival in Arles