One day, quite some time ago, I happened on a photograph of Napoleon’s youngest brother, Jerome, taken in 1852. And I realized then, with an amazement I have not been able to lessen since: ‘I am looking at eyes that looked at the Emperor.’ Sometimes I would mention this amazement, but since no one seemed to share it, nor even to understand it (life consists of these little touches of solitude), I forgot about it.

A paradox: the same century invented history and photography. But history is a memory fabricated according to positive formulas, a pure intellectual discourse which abolishes mythic time; and the photograph is a certain but fugitive testimony.

The necessary condition for an image is sight.

The incapacity to name is a good symptom of disturbance.

The realists do not take the photograph for a 'copy' of reality, but for an emanation of past reality, a magic, not an art.

A light without shadow generates an emotion without reserve.

Who speaks is not who writes, and who writes is not who is.