L’album Photographies, 1937–1970 de Claude Simon : une expérience du temps

This article is the second in a series devoted to the study of the motif of time in the literary and photographic works of Claude Simon, a Nobel Prize-winning author (1985). It proposes to examine the temporal dimension of his album Photographies, 1937–1970, published in 1992. The methodological approach that we have chosen for this article will draw on the epistemology of Henri Bergson, the phenomenology of Gaston Bachelard, the “new criticism” of Roland Barthes, as well as on more recent photographic analyses, such as those of Marta Caraion or Arnaud Claass, while also drawing on the contributions of image theorists, like Georges Didi-Huberman. The photographs allow us not only to see a petrified moment, but also to visualize the passage of time between two moments captured on film and juxtaposed in the album to form a diptych – Simon’s favorite composition.