Annie Ernaux & Photography: An Evening with Lou Stoppard and Lauren Collins

A conversation with Lou Stoppard and Lauren Collins at the American Library in Paris. Filmed on 30/04/2024 with a live audience both in person and on Zoom.
On the occasion of the Maison Européenne de la Photographie exhibition “Exteriors-Annie Ernaux & Photography,” and the release of the accompanying printed volume with London-based publisher MACK, the Library is delighted to welcome curator and writer Lou Stoppard.
In the exhibition, Stoppard traces the close relationship between Ernaux’s literary production and the medium of photography. Adopting Ernaux’s project, to “describe reality as through the eyes of a photographer and to preserve the mystery and opacity of the lives I encountered,” Stoppard juxtaposes passages from Ernaux’s book Exteriors-a collage of observations and reflections on the streets, shops, and public transportation networks of Cergy-Pontoise-with a wide array of photography from the museum collection.
In this program, Stoppard speaks with writer and journalist Lauren Collins to explore the dynamic interplays between the written word and the photograph.
The program was produced in partnership with la Maison Européenne de la Photographie and MACK.
About the speakers:
Lou Stoppard is a British writer and curator. She has written for The Financial Times, Aperture, the New York Times and the New Yorker. Her books include a survey of the work of street photographer Shirley Baker, published by Mack in 2019; Pools, an exploration of swimming in photography, published by Rizzoli in 2020, and Exteriors: Annie Ernaux and Photography, published by Mack in 2024, to time with an exhibition of the same name at MEP, Paris.
Lauren Collins began contributing to the New Yorker in 2003 and became a staff writer in 2008. Her subjects have included Michelle Obama, Donatella Versace, the graffiti artist Banksy, Emmanuel Macron, the refugee crisis, and equal pay. Since 2015 she has been based in Paris, covering stories mainly from France. She is the author of “When in French: Love in a Second Language,” which the Times named as one of its 100 Notable Books of 2016. She is working on a second book, about a coup d’état perpetrated by white supremacists in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1898, and its effects over the past hundred and twenty years.
Evenings with an Author is generously sponsored by GRoW @ Annenberg.