Introduction

Abstract

“Topophilic” photographers in contemporary France endow everyday landscapes with the capacity to expand viewers’ way of seeing, experiencing, and apprehending the diverse territories that comprise modern France. The Introduction argues that their work does so by deploying a “forensic” aesthetic that harnesses the visual and material characteristics of medium- and large-format photography to establish a strong sense of place, one that functions as an “attentional prosthesis” capable of drawing viewers’ attention to sites that mainstream culture tends to neglect. While this “topographic turn” in contemporary French photography has its roots in landscape photography from the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Mission photographique de la DATAR from the 1980s signals a true watershed moment. Building on this important precursor, the new brand of topographic photography that has emerged in France since then represents a visual laboratory through which French culture can both observe and work through why landscape matters. The photographic series and photobooks under consideration throughout The Topographic Imaginary bring distinct portions of the territory into close range, allowing viewers the opportunity to contemplate, in an encapsulated yet surprisingly metonymical way, what attending to place might reveal about a number of issues preoccupying the nation as a whole.