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N EWS

I’m Starting to Feel the

Pain
Antoine d'Agata's use of thermal imaging technology
allows him to visualise the 'essence of humanity' in
his documentation of France's streets and hospitals
at the peak of COVID-19's ravages

Antoine d’Agata

  

Antoine d’Agata Images made in hospitals in Bordeaux, Marseille,

Argenteuil, Nancy and Paris throughout April and May 2020. France.
Antoine d’Agata | Magnum Photos

Former Global Cultural Director of Magnum Photos

— now photography and art consultant — Sophie
Wright here speaks to Antoine d’A gata about his
project, VIRUS. The book VIRUS is available now
on Studio Vortex
Vortex.

See a newly-curated selection of fine prints from this

body of work — available now — on the Magnum
Shop here
here.

“A second chance – that’s the delusion. There

never was to be but one. We work in the dark –
we do what we can – we give what we have. Our
doubt is our passion and our passion is our task.
The rest is the madness of art.”

Antoine d’Agata has spent the last two months

sleeping on a sofa in Magnum Photo’s Paris office. In
early April, as the coronavirus ripped across the
continent and populations hunkered down in
isolation, d’A gata heard French film director Jean-
Luc Godard referencing this Henry James quote –
words that have remained with him during this time
of crisis.

The intensity of feeling and morals, that James

articulates, is something d’A gata relates to. “I’m never
just working – I’m always in an existential crisis,
trying to generate an autonomous and pertinent
position.” For him, this has not been a time for
reflection, so much as action. “I cannot discuss the
idea of creativity without addressing responsibility,”
d’A gata explains, about the strong moral obligation
he feels to be out in the community, making work.
James’s words have been a source of strength to him
during this effort.

Antoine d’Agata Paris and its suburbs under lockdown, March 17 to

May 11 2020. Paris, France. © Antoine d’Agata | Magnum Photos

Prior to COVID-19 calling a halt to the status quo,

d’A gata was due to travel to Mexico to launch a book
and exhibition that he had been working on in
collaboration with a group of prisoners in a Mexican
jail. Now, he is fully immersed in the process of
photographing in the streets of Paris and in the
coronavirus wards in hospitals, to make sense of the
current crisis, and how it is impacting France. After
two months camping out in the Paris office, with
trips for related editorial assignments or independent
projects, to Bordeaux, Argenteuil and Marseilles, he
admits to feeling exhausted: “I’m starting to feel the
pain”.

D’A gata doesn’t like to talk specifically about

aesthetics when referencing his photography. For
him, it is more about finding the right visual language
to tell a story: “It’s not imagination or creativity – its
necessity…I use a lot of different methods to try to
make sense of the reality”. For now, his COVID-19
documentary work is dominated by the use of a
thermal imaging camera. It’s a tool he first used to
document the rituals of religious communities in
Paris, for a Magnum Live Lab commission, on the
three year anniversary of the Bataclan attacks in
November 2018. He is drawn to how this camera
reduces the human subjects in his images to a heat
source, an essence of humanity, stripped of cultural
specificity.

Antoine d’Agata Images of religious communities in Paris and figure

dancing in the re-opened Bataclan nightclub for a Magnum Live Lab
commission, on the three year anniversary of the Bataclan attacks.
Paris, Fran (...)

"[The thermal imaging camera is a

tool d'A gata] first used to document
the rituals of religious communities in
Paris, for a Magnum Live Lab
commission, on the three year
anniversary of the Bataclan attacks in
November 2018. He is drawn to how
this camera reduces the human
subjects in his images to a heat source,
an essence of humanity, stripped of
cultural specificity"
-

Antoine d’Agata Paris and its suburbs under lockdown, March 17

to May 11 2020. Paris, France. © Antoine d’Agata | Magnum Photos

Antoine d’Agata Paris and its suburbs under lockdown, March 17

to May 11 2020. Paris, France. © Antoine d’Agata | Magnum Photos

On the first day of lockdown he took this camera and

went out into the city: “The first few days I was
fascinated by the emptiness and then I went closer –
to the homeless, to people looking for food, to the
police – and became more interested in the
movements of bodies in space – [in their] isolation.”
The initial series of images produced in Paris, was
quickly picked up editorially – the stark, flame-hued
compositions offering an alternative, dystopian
vision of the emptying streets. He has continued to
push himself to cover and record different aspects of
the pandemic’s impact: “I have gone, where it scared
me – to confront the crisis – amongst the most
damaged segments of the population…worrying
about contamination.”

D’A gata has used various strategies to meet the

challenge of encompassing the immensity of the
event and its impact. Before the virus spread to
Europe, he was collecting images from social media
in China – an approach he incorporated most
recently in S.T.A.S.I.S, the book he released via his
own publishing house Studio Vortex (2019). These
raw fragments of reality, from the internet, often have
the capacity to capture rolling news in a way that
classic photojournalism cannot reach. In the past he
has gridded such found images, the multiplicity of
viewpoints referencing the unquantifiable nature of
experience. Like all of us he has felt overwhelmed by
the numbers for this global pandemic, which at times
can seem “beyond reason”.

Antoine d’Agata Paris and its suburbs under lockdown, March 17 to

May 11 2020. Paris, France. © Antoine d’Agata | Magnum Photos

D’A gata has also been in correspondence with a

friend, Mathilde Girard, a young philosopher and
psychoanalyst, who is writing a diary every day,
collating stories and recollections on the crisis. He
admits that this has also been a means to sustain
himself in his work and someone to have someone to
bounce ideas off. Although he has had little time for
reading he is also methodically keeping one or more
articles per day from the press, which he feels is
important to telling story.

Just like many of us, d’A gata is balancing all this

productivity alongside his other work: calls with
Magnum staff, an online workshop with ICP,
working on current publishing or film projects and
keeping in conversation with his family and friends –
speaking with his daughters, his partner in Mexico
and his elderly mother in her apartment in Marseilles.

Antoine d’Agata Images made in hospitals in Bordeaux, Marseille,

Argenteuil, Nancy and Paris throughout April and May 2020. France.
Antoine d’Agata | Magnum Photos

To date, he believes he has taken about 10,000 images

– 6,000 from the street, 80 portraits of refugees
working with MSF; he has photographed in research
labs and documented the testing programme, taking
over 3,000 in various hospitals where he sometimes
worked and slept for five days at a time, over April
and May. For these, he photographed the interactions
between nurses, doctors and patients using the same
thermal imaging camera. Like so many of us, he is
touched by the dedication of medical staff. He says,
“People are doing much more than they are paid to
do. In the hospital I saw people dying and nurses who
were helping people do that with dignity, holding
them in their arms.”

Antoine d’Agata Images made in hospitals in Bordeaux, Marseille,

Argenteuil, Nancy and Paris throughout April and May 2020.
France. © Antoine d’Agata | Magnum Photos

Antoine d’Agata Images made in hospitals in Bordeaux, Marseille,

Argenteuil, Nancy and Paris throughout April and May 2020.
France. © Antoine d’Agata | Magnum Photos

"A lot of work will come out of this

[pandemic]. But artists and
photographers are people who are
good at making a living out of having
nothing to say. I’m worried about the
state of humanity, not the industr y
[...] The consequences are probably
worse than the virus itself: the way in
which the war against the disease is
being used to strengthen control,
both political and economic"
- Antoine d'Agata

Antoine d’Agata Images made in hospitals in Bordeaux, Marseille,

Argenteuil, Nancy and Paris throughout April and May 2020. France.
Antoine d’Agata | Magnum Photos

As to what impact this crisis will have on

photography, d’A gata says somewhat scathingly: “A
lot of work will come out of this. But artists and
photographers are people who are good at making a
living out of having nothing to say. I’m worried about
the state of humanity, not the industry.” He is
skeptical about what things will survive. “What has
helped me since the beginning has been the reference
of philosophers like Giorgio Agamben to an
ongoing, invisible economic war. The consequences
of this are probably worse than the virus itself: the
way in which the war against the disease is being used
to strengthen control, both political and economic.”
For now, he wants to continue this documentary,
hoping to gain access to the subway and hospitals in
Nancy and Marseille, photographing in the places
that have been at the frontline of the disease, where
the real work is being done.

Antoine d’Agata Images made in hospitals in Bordeaux, Marseille,

Argenteuil, Nancy and Paris throughout April and May 2020. France.
Antoine d’Agata | Magnum Photos

Antoine d’Agata

Commission a Magnum photographer

Fine Collectors’ Prints

coronavirus , COVID-19 , France , Medical research , pandemic

- Written by Sophie Wright · Jun 26, 2020

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