The Use of Photography

Winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature.

An account of Annie Ernaux’s love affair with journalist Marc Marie while she was undergoing treatment for cancer, and their combined project to document images and memories.

Love and death cohabit in The Use of Photography, with alternating chapters by the two authors. First published in France in 2005, the book recounts a passionate love affair between Ernaux and the journalist and author Marc Marie, after the two met in January 2003. Ernaux had been receiving intensive chemo for breast cancer during the prior three months and had lost all her hair from the treatments. At the end of January, she had surgery, followed by radiation therapy.

The affair took place in different locations, and Ernaux describes how, shortly after it began, she found herself entranced each morning by the sight of clothes strewn about, chairs out of place and the remains of their last meal of the evening still on the table—and how painful it felt to put things back in order afterward. She went and got her camera, and began to take photographs of the scenes of disarray. When she told Marc Marie what she had done, he said he had felt the same desire.

The Use of Photography is one of the quintessential Ernaux books—told through words in Ernaux’s inimitable style, which is adopted here by both authors.