Emptying the pond

“Emptying the pond to get the fish.”
– Robert Bresson, Notes on the Cinematograph, 19751 2

“One of these days, someone will have to ‘come forward and say’ what that image is, on the home page of VU’ Agency website on 27 November 2025, and what it accomplishes there. In the meanwhile, for the sake of clarity, the reader whose curiosity it piques can read it without cropping via the following link: https://agencevu.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/paquets-cadeaux-bd2.jpg”3.

*

Those rather cautious words, published that very day here4 under a screenshot embedding the said image, were triggered by my indignation, as a photographer from VU’ Agency, towards both what it shows and what it symbolises. An indignation which had yet seemed to me too early to express overtly. Hence the lack of commitment of that first post. At the very least it gave me some sense of assurance – and the feeling to have started something.

The image appeared on the home page of VU’ Agency until 28 December 20255, not in a fixed way but as an item of a slider including other images meant to illustrate the events of the Gallery and of the Agency’s photographers. The initial screenshot is featured anew at the top of the present post, as well as further below in the text.

The quote from Jacques Derrida, incipit of Spectres of Marx, behind which I had sheltered my post, now deserves to be completed : “Someone, you or me, comes forward and says: I would like to learn to live finally”6.

So, has the day come that “someone comes forward and says” what that image is the symptom of? And if yes, is that someone “you or me”? And if me, is it my role? Is it fair to come forward alone? Facing the careful obliteration of what has been invented at VU’ Agency for forty years, don’t we have, all of us, the hundred photographers whom it currently represents, more compelling reasons to speak, and to do that at least collectively? But what would it then mean to be willing “to learn to live finally”?

It is probably too soon to go into the details of the dismembering that is being carried out here and now. Besides, we are probably poorly equipped for collective speech and action. We haven’t been educated for that. We can rue it, yet ought to acknowledge it. I don’t know how it is going for you, all ninety-nine of you, how life is going, your projects, your inventiveness, and how you feel about having participated in a plural vision of the world among the most powerful in the history of photography. Me, a bit shitty, as my daughter would say. For the few of you with whom I happened to speak, barely better.

Sooner or later though, we will have no other option but to come forward, ten or a hundred of us, preferably soon and as a hundred, and publicly condemn, point by point and very strictly, the violence of what is happening right now at VU’ Agency. “It is a matter of honour”, one of us wrote recently. He is right. Honour is the least we can save.

While waiting for stars and black hole to align, willing to “learn to live finally” can mean, in itself, abiding by my own ethical demands, and especially by the ethics of photography that I believe I inherited when I was accepted at VU’ Agency nearly twenty-three years ago. Nothing, therefore, prevents me from somehow sticking my neck out. Coming forward and saying what that image accomplishes. Speaking only about it, so as not to undermine any future speech. Deconstructing that miserable symbol with the most appropriate words possible. Freeing myself from the weight exerted by that imagery on my dignity. Offloading that burden, if only for concerns of mental health.

*

Thus, that is an image cropped to a landscape format, underexposed for a better reading of the text, which states in French: “La Boutique de Noël”, “Christmas Shop” in English, followed by an address and opening hours. In the background of these headings, fake gifts are piled up on a dark green cloth – parallelepipeds wrapped in a paper printed with thumbnail images surrounding the logotype of VU’, with large red gift ribbon around.

The wrapping paper is a poster published by VU’ Agency on the occasion of the opening of its new premises on Avenue the Saxe, in the fifteenth arrondissement of Paris, on 9 September 2025. It reproduces about 150 photographs on a white background, aligned according to a nearly regular grid. These are the invitation cards to the exhibitions of the works of each and every photographer showcased at VU’ Gallery since its inception in 1998. Their names are printed below the grid.

This poster is a variant of the mural pasted on the wall of the passageway behind the garage door of the building, with the difference that on the wall, the photographs are printed on a green background in two blocks, separated by the same list of names.

One could legitimately regret that the photographers of the Agency who have never exhibited at the Gallery are excluded from these documents, not to mention the fact that this incidentally reawakens the old ambiguity between both. After all, this mural coats the entrance of the office of both structures, and this poster mentions their two domain names as well as their common logotype. There is no quibbling in highlighting it: neglected by design or by blunder, some of us are henceforth, if not invited, at least given a good cause to no longer feel represented by this company. (As of me, caught between two pillars: one of my images is there, but not my name.)

It is also permissible to cast doubt on the good taste of such a utilisation of our pictures – decontextualised, shaved off of their captions, displayed as a catalogue of products, reduced to items trapped in a flow. Yet, save the comprehension of the essence of our job, nothing forbade that utilisation. Nothing or almost. According to the terms of our contracts, if we cannot claim any royalties in case the Agency makes use of our photographs to promote our work, its products or services – which goes without saying –, we are nevertheless entitled to deny it any utilisation of our photographs that we would deem unappropriated. If only our permission to use them had been requested here. Had it been, it is likely that most of us would have refused to appear on those posters. It is also likely that photographers who are no longer members of VU’ Agency or Gallery, or who were only exceptionally invited to exhibit there, would be surprised to see their work reproduced here, as far as I know without their consent, at least for the ones with whom I could confirm it.

Despite all that, bad taste and carelessness are not the primary cause of my indignation. If the utilisation of these promotional items had remained within the frame of their usual purpose – being displayed on a wall – their uncouthness would soon have been forgotten. Well, the decorative wall has certainly remained a wall, probably due to technical constraints. But the poster representing our photographs – is it for failing to be sold as initially planned? – ended up as gift-wrap. Someone got that idea, found it relevant and executed it. Not even proper gifts, offered neither to us nor to anyone: fake gifts. Had they only been placed behind the window of the shop, as they were on 5 December, my feeling wouldn’t have gone beyond nausea.

But not at all. It was thought wise to take a picture of these presents in the fashion of a Christmas shop window, then someone, within the company whose mission is to promote our work, decided to feature the resulting image on the homepage of its website.

From Jane Evelyn Atwood to Vanessa Winship, from Philip Blenkinsop to Cristina Garcia Rodero, from Antoine d’Agata to Isabelle Muñoz, from Lars Tunbjörk to Ouka Leele, from Denis Dailleux to Ed van der Elsken by way of dozens of other artists, no matter if their works represent essential landmarks in the history of contemporary photography, no matter that they themselves have dedicated their lives to push the limits of the medium as a tool for questioning the world: wrapping paper for shams of gifts, featured in close-up. A close-up on our fantasised collective corpse – “we” is not dead yet –, so much a close-up that we can recognise the part of ourselves the meaning of which is thereby being emptied.

By affirming to the world the value it ascribes to our photographs – wrapping for fake gifts –, to the injury done to us, the company adds humiliation. That image certainly is a blatant violation of our moral rights – unalienable, imprescriptible and perpetual by the French copyright laws –, and especially of the right to the respect of our work. But any attempt to assert that right would be meaningless, because we receive it on the field of morals, whereas it was produced on the one of merchandising – and certainties, the first of which being that truth is truth here only because someone has decided so and, therefore, applies as truth to everyone and at all times.

To my eyes then, what that image is a symptom of, is the programmed agony of the hundred of us, the 60 avenue de Saxe building as a cenotaph. Not the hundred of us individually – we will keep on living and working – but the hundred of us as an “agency of photographers”. An agency which, as shown by the comparison between the two screenshots of the contact page below, no longer has an artistic direction.

To subvert this death foretold, once we will be alone, we will then have to “learn to live finally” which, however mysterious the Derridian invocation is, could mean learning to live with each other, – or in new associations of each other – because living is only possible with the Other, whom is always greater than us.

Frédéric Lecloux

1  Translation by Jonathan Griffin, New York Review Books, 2016.
2 Quotes aside, translation is mine. Kindly proofread by Raphaël Neal.
3 Should this link become obsolete, the Internet Archive’s WaybackMachine recorded it dated 29 December 2025, here : http://web.archive.org/web/20251229105528/https://agencevu.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/paquets-cadeaux-bd2.jpg.
4 See https://www.fredericlecloux.com/vider-letang/. In French only.
5 Now that the image in question has been removed from the home page slider of the website of VU’ Agency, the reader willing to access it in its original context can check a recording of this homepage dated 6 December 2025, once again through WaybackMachine, via the following link: http://web.archive.org/web/20251206231723/https://agencevu.com/.
6 Translation by Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas, Melville House Publishing, 2007.

Illustration : Screenshot of the home page of VU’ Agency website, 27 November 2025.