Rivages

A member of the Magnum agency since 1981, and known in particular for his images of Morocco, Harry Gruyaert (born in 1941), has another passion, shores. That includes shores on the ocean, the sea or rivers. This anthology was first published in 2003 and has been enriched since. It presents the quintessence in a minimal form: a small introduction by Richard Nonas, a mythical artist of landscapes, and captions reduced to a thread. This is a way of saying, and we can only agree, that images suffice themselves. From 1973 (Badwater, California) to 2016 (the Opal Coast), nearly half a century of photographs carry us from Ostende (Gruyaert is Flemish) to Berck-Plage, from Biarritz to Zanzibar. The promenade starts at Fort-Mahon, on a bright beach with happy bathers, and it ends on a horizon in Nice in 1988, empty and full of dark clouds. One is tempted to see a symbolic and subliminal warning on the way our world turns.

• Rivages, par Harry Gruyaert, Textuel, 2018, 144 p., €49