A Dispossessed Text

Every lover of literature who also loves photography undoubtedly remembers the superb photographic parable recounted by Michel Tournier in his short story Les Suaires de V6ronique: The scene takes place in Arles, during the International Photography Festival. A young woman named Veronique who is a photographer somehow gets her hands on a young boy who was posing as a model in front of the colloquia participants, and she begins to photograph him relentlessly. She transforms him, she reduces him and then she does experiments. She reaches the point of washing him in developer in order to then wrap him in a sheet which is, in fact, a kind of photographic paper, to obtain impressions from his body. On these sheets, which she calls her shrouds, in the same way that she calls herself Veronique-a name which suits her well-the unfortunate boy loses his skin, in every sense of the expression.' Once the shrouds are completed, nothing remains of the model, peeled and desquamated, literally reduced to film (pelliculi) as the narrator finally realizes, after having seen this dermographic exhibition which makes one think

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