Image Education / Research on the Image

Educating about images, organising disagreement

Practical concepts and tools for building a shared understanding through images.

A detailed account of the lecture given on 10 June 2026 at the Archives départementales de Loire-Atlantique, for the Grandir avec la culture network: cultural rights, regimes of images, critical thinking and concrete devices, to build common (…)

Framed, autonomous, vernacular: a typology of the regimes of images

Why defining the different regimes of images is a political, educational and heritage prerequisite.

The audiovisual cultural object is commonly reduced to works holding a visa d’exploitation, the certificate required for theatrical release in France. Yet the other images exist, and act in people’s lives, whether institutions recognize them or (…)

Sound is the first factor of immersion

Why immersion begins with the ears.

We associate immersion with the image that surrounds us, with the spherical screen, with the headset. I defend here the opposite idea, and I unfold it through a history of immersion taken from the angle of sound, from the panoramas of the (…)

Letting autistic children make images

An account of a video workshop at the André Boulloche day hospital.

Over a period of several months, I led a video-creation workshop in a day hospital that cares for autistic children. I want to give an account of it, session by session, and then draw from it a reflection on my own practice. The choice to let (…)

Permanent Photography

The image as a dimension of existence, no longer as a tool of life

Since a camera entered the phone that never leaves us, from 2005 onward, the image has stopped being an object we make at certain moments and has become a milieu we live within. I try to name this shift with a concept, permanent photography, and (…)

The Selfie, the Filter, and the Two Bodies

The image of self as therapeutic working material.

A young woman retouches her ID photo using artificial intelligence. The educator accompanying her tells her: “That’s not you. You’re already very beautiful, but that’s not you.” The young woman herself does not recognise herself in the (…)

The object that disposes

What machines change in mediation.

When we choose a tool for mediation, we choose a device of relationships. The technical object carries within it a history, a politics, ways of arranging bodies and gazes. This is true of the Lumière brothers’ cinematograph in 1895 as much as of (…)

The contemporary functions of images: beyond memory

Towards an anthropology of image-as-speech and its consequences for mediation.

We think we know what an image is. We think it is a trace, a memory, a proof. But images have changed function without our fully realising it. For a considerable share of their uses, they have become acts of language comparable to speech: things (…)

Vision is a reconstruction

What the eye does not see, and why it changes everything about our relationship to images.

We believe we see the world as it is. We believe our eyes capture an objective image of what lies before us, the way a camera would capture a scene. This is false. Our vision is a permanent reconstruction, carried out by a brain that assembles (…)

Image education as a space for connection

Trusting how people see to restore dialogue.

On March 16, 2026, during the National Meeting of Regional Image Education Centres, organised by Normandie Images in Rouen, I took part in a round table entitled “The Time of Gazes,” alongside Mélanie Boissonneau, a lecturer-researcher at the (…)

The Reality and Fiction of Images

How our perceptions navigate between memorial reconstruction and multiple image regimes.

Images perpetually oscillate between real and imaginary. This porous border reveals less a confusion than a fundamental characteristic of our relationship to the visible and to memory. The inaugural disturbanceHas it ever happened to you, (…)

Cinema and artificial intelligence, two innovations looking at each other

Reflections on technological upheavals and their creative echoes.

Cinema and artificial intelligence share a similar trajectory: disruptive innovations first decried, then becoming transformative industries of our relationship to the world. Parallel revolutions, from contempt to industryCinema shares with (…)

The Accelerated Eye

Manifesto for a new ecology of the gaze.

What if speed were not the enemy of culture, but the instrument of a new form of sensitive intelligence? A radical reappropriation of our right to the work that disrupts established cultural hierarchies. Acceleration as an act of creation: moving (…)

The Selfie, Mirror of Narcissus?

A Plea for Redefining Our Relationship to Images.

The omnipresence of the selfie raises questions: is it a sign of a narcissistic era? I argue, on the contrary, that this gesture, poorly understood, reveals a profound mutation in our relationship to the world, to time, and to others. The Social (…)

The mobile phone as a tool for cinematic creation

Revolutionizing practices and perspectives.

In twenty years, the mobile phone has revolutionized cinematic creation: as a tool always within reach, it enables the filming of the unexpected, the invention of new narratives, and the exploration of an aesthetic of fragility. This (…)

About the “new” images

A critical reflection on technological innovation and real cultural transformation.

Between ephemeral fashion effects and genuine artistic revolutions, “new images” often reveal more about our relationship to the present than to the future, and often more about the seduction of fashion than constructive innovation for the (…)

The cinephilia of excerpts

Legitimizing new “impure” practices.

Traditional cinephilia venerates the complete work, but the internet has given rise to a new form: cinephilia of the excerpt. Enthusiasts now appreciate films through fragments, creating a participatory culture that redefines our relationship (…)

For a photographic ecology

A method of opening up to oneself through images.

Photographic ecology proposes using the image as a method of opening oneself up. Not photographing less, but exploring differently: photographing with instinct, without preconceived frames, then enriching ourselves with what our images reveal (…)

Cinema and death

To redefine cinema as an intrinsically diverse phenomenon.

Cinema, as a mechanical recording device, shares a unique relationship with death. This connection redefines the cinematic experience, which is inherently diverse depending on each viewer’s culture and personal history. What is cinema?Cinema (…)

Artificial intelligence is an opportunity for free and experimental cinema

AI offers humanity the opportunity to reclaim its place.

Artificial intelligence is a threat to the professional academic sector that produces blockbusters and other commercially driven films, and an opportunity for free and experimental cinema. When the machine can do better than humansFilms aimed (…)

The difference between image and sound from a neurological point of view

A tool for audiovisual creation.

Images and sounds exist through our perception. The eye and ear transform light and pressure into electrical signals, interpreted by the brain. This internal porosity between image and sound enriches our experience and inspires audiovisual (…)

La réinvention de la séance collective de cinéma sur TikTok

Renaissance spontanée du partage de l’art comme humanisme.

Contrairement à l’idée que les réseaux sociaux isolent, ils réinventent des moments de partage collectif, comme la séance de cinéma. Sur TikTok, Twitch ou YouTube, des lives diffusent des films en temps réel, créant une expérience commune où les (…)

For contemplative cinema

Theoretical opening of the definition of cinema

What is cinema? This question, posed by André Bazin in the 1950s, is, in my view, a very important one. Cinema, like any other art form, always deserves to have its foundations questioned. At the time, André Bazin defined cinema in terms of (…)

Bellapoarch, or the Mona Lisa of the 21^st Century?

Analysis of a success.

A 10-second video posted on the social network TikTok on August 18, 2020 has made, one month later, more than 400 million views, and the highest number of “I like” since the beginning of this social network. Hypothesis on the reasons for this (…)

Vertical films

Reflection and starting point for experiments.

Moving images are verticalizing. This is far from being anecdotal and has an impact on our representation of the world. What philosophical changes does this bring about? How can we explore them? How can we share them? Images are becoming more and (…)

Audiovisual workshops to combat gender stereotypes

Methods for audiovisual creativity.

Thought-provoking ideas and proposals for audiovisual workshop concepts for nuanced and useful actions, with the aim of building critical thinking on gender stereotypes. Stereotypes and dominationThe world has long been largely structured by (…)

Drawing on architecture

The projected image is an extremely rich track to animate architecture, private or public space, the theatre stage. I have been experimenting with it for a long time in the field of live performance as well as in public space. For life to be (…)

Pocketfilms-Empathy

Project to support psychosocial and pedagogical practices around the empathy clinic and using images. By Serge Tisseron and Benoît Labourdette, accompanied bySonia Winter.A website giving details of the methods and results opened on 1 March (…)

Research-action “Image Education 2.1”

Collaborative action-research project led by Benoît Labourdette production in 2018 and 2019, to develop the synergy between teenage cinema attendance and cultural action.In co-production and co-piloting with Arcadi, ACRIF, Images Forum and (…)

The singularity, a collaborative transmedia artistic project

“The singularity” is a collaborative transmedia project, launched in 2016 by Benoît Labourdette. Around a thematic spine, over a long period of time (several years), film creations, theatrical forms, exhibitions, creative workshops in various (…)

Ciné Lab # 6: “New usages, digital cultures. What (R) evolution for cinemas?”

Day of reflection and common development of innovative projects, for cinema operators and mediators.The ACRIRA and the GRAC (Rhône Alpes region), within the framework of their “Ciné Lab # 6”asked me to participate in the animation of a day of (…)

Smugglers images national metting 2016 : pico-projection workshop

As part of smugglers national meetings of images 2016 November 19, 2016, I proposed a “pico-projection workshop”, experiences shared with professionals in education, with the image and with young people to reflect, in action, the potential of (…)

Spirit Journal : article “Lives in Pictures”

I published the article “Lives in Pictures” in the June 2016 issue of the Spirit Journal on the theme “Power of Images”. Issue edited by Carole Desbarats. Presentation text of the article “Lives in Pictures”Smartphones and digital platforms (…)

Tell me LED

Creative residency at the Maison Populaire de Montreuil: participatory creation and feature film. Creative residency at the Maison Populaire de Montreuil: participatory creation and feature film. Creative residency at the Maison Populaire de (…)

Book: “Image education 2.0”

Practical guide (free download).

“Image education 2.0” (under the direction of Benoît Labourdette), practical book of image education in the digital age, published by ACAP. Free download.Download the entire book (french).In line with the work of Jacques Rancière (“The (…)

Ministry of Culture (France) : National Consultation on Arts and Cultural Education

The Ministry of Culture and Communication (France) launched in November 2012 a “National Consultation on Arts Education” to “enable all young people, in all territories, access to art and culture, from early childhood to university.”I was one (…)