Denis Roche's 'Temps profond' excerpts published by artpress

Artpress magazine, in its November 2019 issue (n°471), dedicated a dossier to French writer and photographer Denis Roche, coinciding with the publication of his posthumous book 'Temps profond. Essais de littérature arrêtée 1977-1984' by Éditions du Seuil in October 2019. The volume, edited by his wife Françoise Peyrot, collects essays on what Roche called 'arrested literature,' blending writing and photography. Artpress published three excerpts from the book, dated September 4, 1980; November 9, 1980; and February 29, 1984. In the first, Roche describes photographing a nude model named Claude I in her apartment near the Gobelins district in Paris, detailing her nervousness, the sparse room with a red-covered bed and a large mirror, and his observation of her extreme whiteness. The second excerpt reflects on photography as 'not the instant, but Time,' jotted while driving on Boulevard de Sébastopol. The third recounts receiving a photograph from Bernard Plossu of his son Shane in the New Mexico desert, with a note reading 'Always go where the roads end on maps, where there is nothing left,' prompting Roche to recall an old amateur photo of a woman and two children that inspired poems and has since disappeared. The cover image is a 1977 photo of Roche by Françoise Peyrot at Mesnil-Val.