This image is taken from Michel Setboun’s third book about agencies. Eighty reporters were chosen to comment on an iconic image taken during their careers. The image we’re publishing today is a picture by Xavier Lambours.
Robert De Niro was passing through Paris for his latest film. The magazine Globe Hebdo asked me take his portrait and send Yves Mourousi to do the interview. When I arrived on the scene, Mourousi was nowhere to be found. The press agents were panicking. The tension mounted. And the whole time, De Niro sat in the corner, smiling. his entourage told me that he had just spent a restless night in one of the capital’s more seedy neighborhoods. And he was in a great mood! I suggested photographing him in the bathroom. He liked the idea, playing along, cheerfully, making jokes. Mourousi burst into the hotel room as soon as De Niro had left, delighted.
I took this portrait for Métis, an agency I co-founded in 1989. There were five of us, young people with big artistic ambitions and an outsized need for independence. Our motto was: be an auteur. And we were going to do that by telling original, personal stories. I was named the winner of the Villa Kujoyama in Japan in 1994. Plagued by management problems, the agency imploded fifteen years after its founding. It’s still hard for me to talk about it.
Today I’m a freelance photographer, but I regularly work for the agency Signatures. Our job has changed dramatically since the advent of digital. The press doesn’t pay well. And we’re the ones paying for the photographers willing to work for free. Not to mention all the hardware that we’re supposed to have now. And yet, I’ve never felt more stubborn and creative. I haven’t laid down my arms yet.
BOOK
40 ans de photojournalisme, Génération agences
by Michel Setboun & Marie Cousin
Editions de la Martinière
250 x 285 mm
240 pages
9782732464022
39 €
http://www.editionsdelamartiniere.fr
