The origins of the project

The idea for *S’il n’y avait qu’une image* first took shape during my studies at the École nationale supérieure Louis Lumière, a transitional period between my career as a nurse and my future work as a photographer.

As I prepare for this school’s entrance exam, I am particularly interested in the DATAR’s Photography Mission , which would ultimately serve as the starting point for my other projects.

In the 1980s, DATAR (the Interministerial Delegation for Territorial Planning and Regional Attractiveness) commissioned several photographers to create a photographic portrait of France. Each was tasked with producing a photographic series in a specific region of France. Well-known photographers such as Doisneau, Depardon, and Koudelka participated, as did others less so, producing varied photographic works in black-and-white and color, yet with a coherent overall unity that fascinates me.

This large-scale public photography commission made a deep impression on me, both for the photographs themselves and for the approach taken. My interest was all the more pronounced because I have primarily been taking landscape photographs since I first started out in photography. Since discovering this project, I have been dreaming of taking part in a similar initiative.

Intrigued by this photographic initiative, I have chosen commissioned photography as the topic of my Master’s thesis. In this thesis, I explore not only photographic assignments but also the concept of commissioning and the role of the client.

Since participating in a major national photography project was unlikely, I decided on a different approach: to create opportunities for commissioned work through my future projects and have an “unexpected” person commission a photograph from me. Unexpected in the sense that this person would have no connection to the arts or photography. That way, anyone could become a client for an image.

While studying photography, I continued to work as a nurse on a temporary basis. For three years, I had the opportunity to work in several hospitals in the Paris region on short-term assignments. As I moved through the wards, I began to reflect on the space of the hospital room: a confined, closed-off space with little connection to the outside world, depersonalized by identical furniture in every room. Patient rooms are assigned at random. The walls are usually bare, but photographs are taking on an increasingly important role, particularly during long hospital stays. One can then see photographs brought in by patients’ loved ones: portraits of children, family members, drawings by grandchildren, or even pictures of pets.

In response to these reflections on the hospital room, the concept behind the project *If There Were Only One Image* is to position myself asa“mediator” between the interior of the room and the outside world to which the patient has no—or no longer has—access. Taking a photograph and then printing it aims to provide the patient with a point of reference in this space—a window onto the world. The goal is not to select a pre-existing photo, but rather to undertake a genuine photographic process for each patient.

At the same time, I’m reading Laurent Graff’s book titled *You Have Only One Photograph Left to Take*. Beyond the story told in this novel, it is above all its title that strikes me: if I had only one photograph left to take, which one would it be? A question to which I could find no answer, but which made me reflect on the idea of choosing a single image.

That question led to two others: if I had only one more image to create, what would I choose? It’s a question I haven’t been able to answer. And yet, there will surely be an answer one day, and I hope someone will be able to bear witness to that “final image.” The second question that came to mind involved someone else: what if I had only one more image to create for someone? This question, which struck me at that moment, later allowed me to develop the initial ideas for the project *If There Were Only One Image*, which at the time did not yet have a name.

In 2013, I believe during my final year of study at Louis Lumière, I conceived a project that would address this question while blending the hospital setting with the concept of a commissioned photograph. I envisioned a project in which I would fulfill patients’ final photographic wishes, but I was convinced that this project had to be carried out outside of school.  Later, after starting the project, I expanded my thinking to include a broader audience, offering to create an image for any patient who felt the need or desire for one, regardless of the stage of their illness.

So this project, which I conceived, stems from two approaches. The first is closely tied to my work as a caregiver, with the goal of creating something that is both useful to the patient and selfless. The second is photographic, where the creation of the photograph chosen by the patient is a kind of “photographic commission.” Sometimes, it is a photographic challenge in which the patient acts as the prescriber, the requester, and the “commissioner” of the image. Once this person has requested the image, the challenge is to photograph it in a way that reproduces the expected image as closely as possible.