Published in 1992 and presenting prints of photographs taken between 1937 and 1970, Claude Simon's book Photographies 1937–1970 is itself a kind of retrospective. Moreover, the themes of Photographies are related to those which can be found in the novels of the period, particularly Le Vent, La Route des Flandres and Histoire. This essay will demonstrate that Simon's methods as a photographer offer a retrospective understanding of his art as a novelist and, in particular, of his treatment of the themes of reminiscence and the acquisition of memories. Retrospection is one of the fundamental procedures of his work. Album d'un amateur (1988), the second collection of photographs published by Simon, like the folio he recently assembled for the review Du, are splendid examples of this theme, as are the novels, Les Géorgiques, L'Acacia and, in particular, Le Jardin des Plantes, a masterly retrospective of his oeuvre by the author himself. In the preface to Photographies, Simon insists less on the commemorative power of photography than on its capacity to present concrete reality: ‘seule, à ma connaissance du moins, la photographie peut saisir et garder une trace de ce qui n'avait encore jamais été et ne sera plus jamais'.

The pages which follow will analyse the way in which the writer works with the photographs and the gaps between them, in order to build the structure of a book that makes sense by putting the viewer's observational powers to work. The importance of the notion of construction is revealed in a ‘diptych’ which figures in Photographies (pp. 86–87): the left panel is composed of a photograph of a wall made up of alternate rows of pebbles and bricks (Page d'écriture), while to the right we see a wall of undressed stone (Mur à Salses).