This book is the second volume about the amazing Florence and Damien Bachelot, after Des villes et des hommes. Published on the occasion of Sam Stourdzé's exhibition at the Villa Médicis from October 2022 to January 2023, it focuses on the two great transatlantic traditions: so-called humanist French photography and early 20th-century American street photography. The presence of numerous vintage prints by Saul Leiter testifies, with the move to color, to a shift towards the second half of the century and a reversal of photographic influences.

Finally, we explore the beginnings of modern reportage with Gilles Caron, up to the documentary portraits of contemporary photographers such as Laura Henno. A leitmotif of the collection lies in the power of these exceptional images to bear witness to a world in flux, in crisis, and grappling with constant social and moral questioning. However, the Collection does not freeze in this idea and opens above all to encounters with an artist and his work. Thus, we discover the essential place given in the exhibition to Saul Leiter, whose production is above all a magnificent pictorial research rather than a moral plea.

The interview between Michel Poivert, a leading figure in the history of photography and a renowned art critic, Sam Stourdzé, director of the Villa Medici and curator of the exhibition, and Florence and Damien Bachelot, helps us understand the multiplicity of the Collection, as well as its immense artistic and humanist quality.