RFI Launches Multilingual Photo Series for Photography's Bicentennial

RFI's 17 language services and its French newsroom launched a multilingual series on September 14, 2026, marking the bicentennial of the first known permanent photograph. Titled "Objectifs Monde," the project features 17 emblematic photographs that have shaped history, with each image explored by a different language desk: English, Armenian, French, Khmer, Chinese, Spanish, Hausa, Mandinka, Fulfulde, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Kiswahili, Persian, Romanian, Russian, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese. Running for 17 days with one photograph per day, the series spans subjects from the Moon to Tiananmen Square, Brazil's gold mines to the streets of Tehran, Moscow, and Conakry. Each photograph serves as the starting point for a narrative, with a strict visual approach: every video relies on a single photograph, without any external illustrative images. Movements, reframing, zooms, depth animations, and sound design are used to explore the image in minute detail and reveal its historical and contemporary dimensions. One selected image is that of General de Gaulle behind a BBC microphone in London, chosen for its historical weight and symbolic significance, though it was not taken on June 18, 1940, during the famous Appeal, but a year and a half later. The series is available on RFI's accounts. France Médias Monde is a partner of the Photography Bicentennial, organized by the Ministry of Culture.