The release of a new book titled The time of battles, a trial on the horizon of 2025 in the affair of the Libyan financing of his 2007 presidential campaign… The former President of the Republic Nicolas Sarkozy is doubly back in the news at the end of the summer. On August 25, 2023, he was at a signing session in a bookstore in Arcachon (Gironde). His visit attracted press photographers.
A photo of this day caught the eye of 20 minutes. That of the photojournalist Stephane Duprat. He explains to us the making-of of this “image which makes it possible to explain the news without saying too much about it either”.
What do we see in the picture?
For Stéphane Duprat, this “contrasted” photo represents “a somewhat suspended moment” where we see “three books on a pile, piled up in a box, waiting for something”. He admits to us that he enjoys making images in “chiaroscuro to show only one subject”. The photo also symbolizes a link between the past and the future of Nicolas Sarkozy’s political career. When we mention to him the contradiction between the word “Fragile” written on the cardboard and the objectives sought by the former President of the Republic with the release of this book, he admits: “It’s true… The title The time of battles opposed to the word “Fragile”. He concedes that he had not seen the image from this angle at first and recognizes that the parallel is “interesting”. For him, this photo is “a side”, something a little different “in terms of classic illustration of dedications”.
What is the shooting context?
The image was taken an hour before Nicolas Sarkozy arrived at the General Library in Arcachon. The photographer says that a “fairly substantial” line of readers has formed and that the bookseller has decided to sell copies of the book to those who do not have any. A photo captured a few minutes before the start of the sale with a 24-70 mm lens installed on his camera. This equipment offers more simplicity and flexibility in shooting subjects close to the photographer.
The more anecdote
Stéphane Duprat gives us a somewhat “out of context” story of the shooting that took place in the bookstore during the signing session, when a student from Science Po Paris approached Nicolas Sarkozy to invite him to intervene in his school. By telling him that, unlike François Hollande, who “intervened last year”, he “has not come for a long time”. The photographer tells us that the former head of state responded by asking everyone a question: “But who is François Hollande? Laughter assured in an assembly won over to the cause of the former president beaten in his bid for re-election by the socialist candidate in 2012. A sentence also intended to play on the spring of political communication in the presence of journalists.