Bookshelf

Luc Debraine: Les Garde-Temps. Les Editions Noir sur Blanc, 2023. 120 pages • 29 Euros • 39 CHF

Préface d’Étienne Klein. 50 photographies en noir et blanc

Les garde-temps sont des horloges qui gardent un temps précieux : celui de la mémoire. Ils ont été arrêtés nets par des catastrophes naturelles ou humaines, du Titanic à Hiroshima, de Buchenwald aux tours du World Trade Center. Ils affichent encore des moments fatidiques. Certains ont été stoppés volontairement pour marquer une révolution, une libération, un événement singulier. Les garde-temps sont parfois hors d’usage, mais leur silence en dit long sur un destin hors du commun. Ils sont conservés dans des lieux publics, des musées ou chez des particuliers. Ils témoignent d’une volonté : ne pas oublier.

Par la photographie et le texte, Luc Debraine compose une fresque de ces témoins muets de l’histoire. Il tire parti de sa quête, menée pendant deux décennies dans le monde entier, pour interroger la nature profonde de la photographie et du temps. Prendre une image fixe d’une horloge arrêtée revient à suspendre le temps deux fois. Le geste permet de comprendre que la photographie et l’horlogerie, deux arts du temps, ont beaucoup en commun. Roland Barthes le disait : un appareil photo est une horloge à voir.

Luc Debraine est le directeur du Musée suisse de l’appareil photographique de Vevey. Il est également journaliste, photographe et commissaire d’exposition. Il a été chargé de cours en culture visuelle à l’université de Neuchâtel, ainsi que membre des rédactions du journal Le Temps et du magazine L’Hebdo.

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About the author

Nadia Sikorsky

Nadia Sikorsky was born and raised in Moscow. She graduated from the Faculty of Journalism at Moscow State University and went on to complete her postgraduate studies there, earning a PhD in History. She spent 13 years at UNESCO, first in Paris and then in Geneva. After serving as Director of Communications at Green Cross International, founded by Mikhail Gorbachev, she launched NashaGazeta.ch in 2007, Switzerland’s first Russian-language online daily newspaper.

In 2022, Nadia Sikorsky was named to Le Temps’ Forum des 100, which brings together individuals who, in the newspaper’s view, have “significantly contributed to the success of French-speaking Switzerland”, from across public life, business, politics, science and culture.

After 18 years at the helm of NashaGazeta.ch, Nadia Sikorsky decided to devote herself to what had always held a special place in her work as a journalist: culture in all its diversity. This led to the creation of Russian Accent, a trilingual cultural blog in Russian, French and English, born in the heart of Europe, in Switzerland, which has become her second home and whose multiculturalism and multilingualism have helped shape the character of this new project.

At the heart of the project is the perspective of a European of Russian origin, drawing on more than 35 years of professional experience and a deep knowledge of both cultural traditions. Nadia Sikorsky sees her role as that of a cultural mediator between the two. The title of the blog, Russian Accent, reflects this idea: the accent is neither a linguistic barrier nor a political position, but a distinctive cultural imprint within a European context.

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