Atlas de La Manche/“Qu’on est loin des Amériques”: A Collaboration Between Photographers and Geographers

This collective text aims to describe and re-contextualise an experiment which took place in the specific territory of Normandy, France, between geographers, photographers, and local residents, leading to the production of an illustrated Atlas de la Manche and a series of workshops and an exhibition entitled “Qu’on est loin des Amériques”. As actors immersed in different ‘iconographic systems’ (Mendibil 2008), participants faced issues of image production and use, issues of the dissemination of academic knowledge and the reception of these initiatives, both by the inhabitants and users of the territories concerned, and by local institutions or the regional press. The chapter first addresses the relationship between geographers and the photographic image from a situated viewpoint, and into the practices in use within the Espaces & sociétés-Caen research team, placed in their academic context. It then aims to situate the experiences and careers of the photographers who are members of the Tulipe Mobile collective, and the importance given to the ‘restitution of images’ and the dialogue with the subjects of their images. The chapter then examines one of the products resulting from the collaboration between the two groups, the Atlas de La Manche, in terms of what the work contains and presents, due to the articulated combination of the different types of images that compose it.