O. fluctuat nec mergitur

Discussing what drove me to scrutinise evil for such a long time without telling you what happened to me on 13 November, 2015, is practically impossible. I would like, one day, not to have to do it anymore, but the matter sticks to me like an indelible stain on my shirt.

Here is the void, year zero, nothingness.

On 13 November, I was taken hostage alongside ten spectators by two of the three terrorists who had massacred ninety people in the Bataclan concert hall. The hostage situation lasted for a total of two and a half hours. The assault by the police of the Research and Intervention BrigadeFootnote 1 in the cramped little service corridor of the concert hall where we were confined put an end to the macabre dance of death. I came out of it bruised, with burnt hair, partially deaf, and with a deep scar in my mind and soul.

I. Vacuum implere

As I write these words, it will be almost a year since the verdict of the trial of the 13 November 2015 attacks in Paris and Saint-Denis resounded in the grand wooden courtroom of the Palais de Justice in Paris. Being aware that my unique journey through the trial has taken me through several transitional phases, I understood, at the moment when the President of Court Jean-Louis Périès's microphone went silent, that my transformation had come to an end. As François Jullien writes in The Silent Transformations, citing Plato's reflections on existence: ‘How can I transition’, he wonders, ‘from non-being to being, or from immobility to mobility? I am sitting, and then walking. How will I grasp this passage or this in-betweenness?’Footnote 2 I walked onwards. Suddenly, without being able to grasp the mechanical movement that compelled me to act during the trial. For ten months, not only did I immerse my pen in the ink of justice, but I also submerged my camera in it. Although it may be too early to describe the psychic transitions that have occurred in my unconscious mind, I know, however, that at their core lies my ardent desire to retake control of my life. Indeed, my rationale to describe the primal urge that drove me to keep a journal of the trial is quite simple. However, I did not know the parameters or any of the ins and outs that the completion of such an act would constitute, nor the real commitment that it would entail in my daily life. Once the microphone switched off, I discern in this act the end of habits and routines, the end of our presence in the corridors of the Court, this ancient temple of the Île de la Cité. I drag my feet as I leave the courtroom for the last time, without casting a final glance behind. Routines have allowed me to solidify my lived experience in a literal sense, but they have also contributed to giving substance to my daily life by pushing me to my creative limits, revolutionising my writing and photography. Jean-Didier Urbain writes in Performative Habit or ‘Creative ‘Routine’: ‘A habit can also be a constructive and creative force. In an expression like “Don't worry, I'm used to it”, it no longer refers to previous meanings, but rather to the positivity of past experience or skills. It signifies auxiliary knowledge, endurance, or know-how. It reassures to such an extent that habit becomes what enables and guarantees action, countering the handicap of inertia, repetition, paralysis, or obsessiveness commonly attributed to it. It no longer stops the world; it facilitates it. Tames it or domesticates it…’Footnote 3

Each of these new creative routines has gradually disrupted my perception of the terrorist event I experienced years ago. It was these routines that kept me going from the opening of the trial on 8 September 2021 until its closure. They tirelessly dug up the previously reassuring certainties about the thirteenth. Habits, routines, I had unconsciously erected as the only tangible materials of the trial, in a simple creative reflex, in an outward gesture. I was no longer the victim. I was now the actor of my own existence, casting off inertia, finally moving.

II. Who Am I?

I was born in Chile in 1992, but it was years later, in the Paris suburbs, that I had my first encounter with photography. I was five years old when I saw someone holding a camera for the first time. It was my mother. She would occasionally buy a disposable Kodak camera, not by choice, but because we couldn't afford more than that. In my family, there were no artists per se, and no one really understood what I meant when I declared, during my teenage years, that I wanted to become a photographer. To truly understand, one must know why and where my mother would photograph us. First, the ‘where’: here and there in the city, in front of monuments, memorials, parks, beautiful roundabouts, flowers, and as a family. We were facing eviction, ready to go back to square one: Pucón, my hometown. It was a tragedy that my mother tried to cope with by burning through as many 24 × 36 films from disposable Kodak and Fujifilm cameras as possible. We had to hold onto the promised land that didn't want us. But fate had other plans. Just a few weeks before we were to be escorted to the border, the deportation order was cancelled, and our French life began. My genuine interest in photography started around 2005 when a friend introduced me to the works of JR—I was captivated. As I delved deeper into it, I found myself attending a photography school in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, learning the ropes. The image of my mother standing before my brother and me will never fade from my memory.

At the dawn of the trial, I became aware that I had never embarked on a subject so significant to me and, as I would soon discover, to society as well. It should be mentioned that I had given up all hope of being a photographer in the 2010s, following a dreadful experience in photojournalism. Subsequently, I wandered for years, until I found solace in a new pursuit: bartending. This newfound passion, however, was shattered by the emergence of terrorism in the very place where I felt most comfortable: rock concerts. This led me back to aimless wandering, accompanied by my suffering, post-traumatic stress as my closest companion, and my phone camera as a substitute for my original one. It was the mounting bills that compelled me to put an end to my nomadic existence. But it pained me deeply to return to a profession that had previously yielded no rewards; I simply had to work to make a living, as that was all I knew. I emphasise the word ‘work’ because it was more akin to being a photographic labourer than an artist—I was too wounded to see clearly. From 2018 to the start of the trial, I worked as a freelance photographer for communication companies in the wine industry and for a few winemakers. But I had lost my passion, and I was not only dealing with the work, but also the waves of trauma that would crash upon me each day. When I presented the idea of a journal to the editorial team at FranceInfo, I immediately emphasised the photographic aspect to distinguish myself from the multitude of journalists covering the trial (several dozen, of various nationalities). Nothing was prepared; the journal had neither a structure nor purpose, nor an editorial plan. It was simply a matter of being present, writing, and taking photographs. It was the first time in history that the press gave a voice to a victim of terrorism to recount their trial within its pages. It was the first time I wrote in the columns of a press organisation. I am neither a journalist nor a photojournalist, simply the actor of my own victimised existence. On 8 September, the first image I published on Franceinfo’s website depicted a corridor in the Court in black and white. At the time I captured it, the place had not yet been adorned with the appropriate signs to guide us, the victims, to the grand wooden courtroom dedicated to the trial. I wanted to make an impact by showcasing the contrast between the buzz of the first day and the emptiness of the preceding months leading up to the trial, not only within the Courthouse walls but also in our lives. I continued in this manner until the final day. As the trial progressed, I discovered my favourite spots, the ones where I felt comfortable and where, despite the harshness of the trial, I managed to extricate myself from the cloud of traumatic dust in which we were floating. On certain days, depending on the angle of the article I was writing, I would photograph specific locations or individuals in an attempt to put things in order. There were days that left a mark, like the one when I photographed Sophie Dias, the daughter of the only victim who died in the attack at the Stade de France, or the day when I took portraits of the lead singer of Eagles of Death Metal, who came to testify at the trial.

Photograph by Arthur Dénouveaux

III. Following the Light

Coherence was crucial for the cohesion of the journal that I had envisioned. From September to late October, I photographed dozens of victims each day as they came to testify in court. One person was absent during the first round of testimonies: Jesse Hughes, the lead singer of Eagles of Death Metal, scheduled to testify in May 2022. Arthur Dénouveaux, President of the victims’ association of the 13th November attacks, ‘Life For Paris’, is part of my closest circle of friends connected to the attack. He is the one with whom, for several years, I have engaged in profound reflections on the status of victims, and it is also in his company that I spent many hours during the trial. By coincidence, Arthur knows Jesse, and I could propose the idea of photographing him months before his visit to France. Jesse and his lawyer agreed to a photo session exclusively reserved for me. It is a mild day, and I meet my friend near the Court of Justice, where both of us have an appointment with Jesse and Eden Galindo, also a member of Eagles of Death Metal, on 13 November. It is now May, and I have developed all my courthouse routines. People recognise me and know ‘who’ I am, and I now take pleasure in doing what I do. Little did I know at the time that deep in my mind, all the triggers of my psychological transformation had already been pulled: I was in the process of shedding the garment of victimhood. If I want to present these two photographs, it is because they represent, in the purest form, the illustration of the journey I was undertaking. A photograph of a cruise. A photograph of an airplane in the sky. I define myself more as an instinctive photographer, far removed from the meticulous setups of those who operate behind closed blinds in studios where artificial lighting overshadows natural light. There is, in my experience, a kind of ultimate poetry to be captured in the moments that unfold before us. A gesture, a gaze, a posture—only photography allows for this mystical capture, only photography freezes time. As I go about my jobs, I go hunting, capturing images of the subjects I photograph, but without planning anything; my eyes guide me. Like William Eggleston, who in his book Mystery of the Ordinary narrates his daily life through photography, allowing viewers to immerse themselves in America from the 1950s to 2000. I knew that I belonged to the group of photographers who chase light rather than wait for it. Jesse is much more stressed than me, perhaps because I am in a familiar environment. All of this is new to him—the rules of the Court, the gendarmes, the French judicial system. Unlike the other victims I have already photographed during the first part of the trial in 2021, I came with my camera. The instructions given by the organising magistrate and Jesse Hughes’ lawyer are clear: ‘Hurry up!’ I quickly gather myself and say, ‘Jesse, you don't have to pose. Just be natural and stand here, next to the handrail’. At that moment, I didn't know that Arthur had slipped behind me to take a photo of me—a sort of terrible mise en abîme: the victim photographing the victim, who photographs the victim. I press the shutter and take about ten photos, including one with Arthur and another with Eden. Then I ran to the journalists’ room to continue following the trial. Later, in front of my computer screen, I discover the sad face of a man marked by the ordeal. The features of someone who suffers from the same torments as the more than 1,800 civil parties involved in the trial. Jesse Hughes, as much of a rockstar as he is, wears the same dark veil as the victims I have photographed so far. This contrast between my mental image (that of a man with unwavering courage, a legend of rock and concert halls) shocks me and evokes the sharp memory of trauma—we are all in the same boat. To adhere to the pattern of the other victims’ photographs, I decide to edit the image in black and white, increasing the contrast in order to further darken the marked face of the rockstar in suit.

The dizzying repetition in the photo taken by my friend almost scares me. This banner of victimhood, placed into the context of who we are at this moment of the trial, becomes a marker of our collective transition, to which the staircase leading to the courtroom bears witness. It is while preparing this text that I finally managed to confront these two photographs and, in the process, reflect on the transitional journey I had undertaken during those ten months. The morning after my testimony in court, I woke up with a resounding question in my mind: ‘Am I still a victim?’ This question rocks the entire universe I had been confined to for the past six years. What does it truly mean to be a victim? After the shock, I decided, for the rest of the trial, to place this question at the centre of my internal dialogues and to no longer see my work through a single lens—that of the testifying victim, but instead through a new one—that of the individual who speaks out. That is how I continued with my journal until the day of the verdict.

Photograph by David Fritz Goeppinger

IV. I Am

The trial and the journal have given me the opportunity to openly express my mental and physical state. They have shown the world the daily life of a victim who follows ‘his trial’, but at the same time writes between the lines, revealing how it has also healed him. In retrospect, the trial was practically a pretext, an exercise to prove to myself my ability to be a photographer, to be an author, and to understand that I was no longer and would never be the person I was before. That ghost, whom I had been chasing until that moment, obstructed my vision, preventing me from seeing the man I had become through the battles in the trenches of my trauma. The trial, through the process of repair and the balance of justice, returned my voice, my sight, and my capacity to Be. Until then, I believed that the hostage-taking I experienced on 13 November had vanquished and hardened the flexibility of my existence. I had mourned my professional life and that young 23-year-old man. However, he never ceased to exist. He knocked on the door of my home every day, checking if I was ready to resume my dialogue with him, to reconnect with that forgotten shadow I left in the one-metre-thirty by six-metre-long corridor of the Bataclan.

Jean-Paul Sartre said, regarding individual responsibility and freedom of choice in shaping one's identity: ‘What is important is not what happens to us, but what we do with what happens to us’.Footnote 4 The journal of the trial of the Paris attacks is the witness to this transition, this connection between the former ‘me’ and the new ‘I’. Having become the subject of my own life, I no longer say ‘I am a victim of’ but ‘I was a victim’.