Born in 1940, Annie Ernaux grew up in Normandy, studied at Rouen University, and later taught at secondary school. From 1977 to 2000, she was a professor at the Centre National d’Enseignement par Correspondance. Her books, in particular A Man’s Place and A Woman’s Story, have become contemporary classics in France. In 2022, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

‘The Use of Photography … approaches Ernaux’s experience of breast cancer in the early 2000s with a similar fearlessness, emphasizing sensuality in the face of death. It is a radical gesture to treat the sick body, a body threatened by its own demise, as one that is also capable of performing that most generative of acts: sexual intercourse. In doing so, Ernaux takes control of, and breathes life into, the narrative of illness and death.’— Rhian Sasseen, The Atlantic

Born in 1940, Annie Ernaux grew up in Normandy, studied at Rouen University, and later taught at secondary school. From 1977 to 2000, she was a professor at the Centre National d’Enseignement par Correspondance. Her books, in particular A Man’s Place and A Woman’s Story, have become contemporary classics in France. In 2022, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

‘The Use of Photography … approaches Ernaux’s experience of breast cancer in the early 2000s with a similar fearlessness, emphasizing sensuality in the face of death. It is a radical gesture to treat the sick body, a body threatened by its own demise, as one that is also capable of performing that most generative of acts: sexual intercourse. In doing so, Ernaux takes control of, and breathes life into, the narrative of illness and death.’— Rhian Sasseen, The Atlantic

Born in 1940, Annie Ernaux grew up in Normandy, studied at Rouen University, and later taught at secondary school. From 1977 to 2000, she was a professor at the Centre National d’Enseignement par Correspondance. Her books, in particular A Man’s Place and A Woman’s Story, have become contemporary classics in France. In 2022, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

‘The Use of Photography … approaches Ernaux’s experience of breast cancer in the early 2000s with a similar fearlessness, emphasizing sensuality in the face of death. It is a radical gesture to treat the sick body, a body threatened by its own demise, as one that is also capable of performing that most generative of acts: sexual intercourse. In doing so, Ernaux takes control of, and breathes life into, the narrative of illness and death.’— Rhian Sasseen, The Atlantic