Signed edition

80-page, 28 x 21,5 cm format newsprint publication

with a text by Mehdi Belhaj Kacem

in a box with signed print of

Haute-Vienne. Croisière roundabout. 2019.

Archival Pigment Print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308g,  

19.5 x 26 cm — 100 / 15 HC / 15 AP

The “Empty Diagonal” is a corridor that runs through France, from the Southwest to the Northeast. It is a sparsely settled, structurally poor area; the grey-brown underbelly of the centralized state that is dominated by its shining capital, Paris.

Internationally renowned photographer Antoine d’Agata and Tunisian-French philosopher Mehdi Belhaj Kacem travelled along the trajectory through abandoned towns and toxic industrial zones. In gloomy hotel rooms, and in front of bricked-up windows, they faced the desolate void, generating sober analysis.

Along the national roads, they encountered recurring outposts and scattered groups of Yellow Vests, as well as battalions of police guarding the president on his democracy tour. Their journey was tantamount to the analysis of a damaged psyche, of a country as real as it is ghostly, whose name is not only France, whose face now increasingly bears the monotone features of the West, emptied by neoliberalism.

The unsigned 80-page newsprint publication is part of DIAPHANES Magazine 6/7.