[Available in French only]

Whether the photograph shows the heroic death of a Republican soldier during the Spanish Civil War, a Vietnamese girl burned by napalm, or the suicide of a politician with the media in attendance, the principle is the same. Photographic reportage encapsulates the most significant episodes of current events-so much so that these images (and they are legion) sometimes sum up an epoch all by themselves. The most emblematic photographs are often those that reduce the complexity of a given historical situation exclusively to its photogenic manifestations. This is because photographs pull together, in a particularly compelling manner, the whole range of questions associated with the specific events, catastrophes, human interest stories and humanitarian emergencies indissociable from all contemporary concepts of history. The creed imposed by photography is this: there can be no history without instants. As recent attempts to celebrate, mourn or simply take stock of the 20th century have emphatically reminded us, photographs are monuments to the momentary.