While discussions about video games generally focus on their economic impact, as the world’s leading cultural industry, or on the supposed risks associated with playing them (addiction, violence), they rarely mention the conditions under which these works are produced, which are now firmly embedded in our daily lives. This book therefore sets out to examine the relationship between video games and work, focusing on those who make these games, whether professionally or as amateurs, the conditions under which they are developed, and the other labor-intensive activities that rely on these creations (esports, journalism, streaming).

In a sector marked by constant growth, but also by an unprecedented employment crisis, it seeks to document the working conditions within this cultural industry: from the history of video games to the gaming “ecosystem,” including the ethical, social, and political issues it raises, this book offers an in-depth look at the debates that animate, disrupt, and shake up the relationship between work and video games, studying its past, documenting its present, and developing ideas for its future.

The philosopher Gilles Tiberghien is known for his work on landscape and particularly for his research around Land Art, his writings and meetings with the greatest artists who have contributed to the diffusion in France of this important artistic movement born in the United States in the twentieth century. But for a long time, less known by his public, Gilles Tiberghien is interested in photography and writes regularly about contemporary photographers. Paysmages thus brings together a set of texts written over nearly twenty years. The selection of photographers that the author has decided to propose here highlights his reflections on the notion of landscape: “The question here is not how we picture landscapes, through photography, but rather how it crystallizes into these images something that we end up calling landscape.”

Essays on the works of Aurore Bagarry, Thibaut Cuisset, Suzanne Doppelt, Hamish Fulton, Mario Giacomelli, Lucie Jean, Josef Koudelka, Richard Long, Alex MacLean, Manuela Marques, Bernard Plossu, Claire Renier, Bertrand Stofleth and Bill Viola.

This book is the retelling of a decade (2013-2023) of activism for women photographers’ recognition in places of artistic expression and media, which profoundly changed the photography world by opening it to more diversity. For this testimonial-story, Sylviane Van de Moortele met several actors of the cultural sphere at the time (artists, institutions…), both strongly opposed to change and in favor of it. The book especially focuses on photographer Marie Docher’s activist journey, also known as Vincent David, author of the Atalantes & Cariatides blog.

The video game’s extension to unrelated fields is a characteristic trend of our contemporary world, often described by the term “gamification”. This growing phenomenon particularly favors the development of “serious games”, which combine recreational means with a productive, educational or communicative end. Julian Alvarez, for whom “playing is an everyday job”, provides the reader (or player) with guidance to help them navigate a world infused with gaming culture and decide for themselves to which extent playful activity and laborious constraint should be confused or distinguished.

Since the end of the 19^th century, postcards have played an essential role in the pictorial representation of territories. Initially linked to migration, they gradually became a vacation ritual with the rise of paid leaves and mass tourism. Nouvelles du paradis takes an original, dual approach to the postcard, considering it both as an object of correspondence and as an industrialized, editorialized item. Conceived as a reference work, this book links various disciplines’ (history, sociology, ethnology, contemporary art) contributions to paint a very complete picture of the evolution of this popular yet almost extinct medium.

Ecce Dico is for people who are interested in and fascinated by creative careers. Soft skills, relationships, mindset, perspectives, it sheds light on the daily life in an agency and the numerous professionals working there. Twelve years after Ecce Logo (Loco, 2011), Gilles Deléris et Denis Gancel have more thoughts on the world of brands, design and communication. Co-founders of the W agency known for its creativity, the authors offer their original and honest insight, one definition at a time, by sharing their experiences and love for “the greatest job in the world after medicine and architecture”.

This book aims to examine the various forms of hybridization between artistic, design, and architectural practices. It adopts a transdisciplinary perspective in order to reflect on the space-time of creation and its repercussions in education, research, and transmission. What approaches could be used to combine these different areas of practice and theory in bold educational initiatives, transcending disciplinary boundaries and their contingencies?

As anthropologist Tim Ingold has shown, the noun “in-between” indicates a process, a movement, or a becoming in which things are never fixed in a preconceived identity. The authors (researchers, artists, designers, architects) have chosen to situate themselves in the space of the in-between, an interstitial and eventful space that constantly requires new mapping. The aim is to go beyond the analysis of known situations of collaboration between the arts, architecture, and design in order to better understand the workings of the multiple connections between these fields: what makes them possible, what they make possible. Through practices of “indiscipline” and “relational pedagogy,” new territories for research-creation are opening up.

This book is based on the concept of distance, as it lies at the heart of the concept of play: to say that there is play is to say that there is a space between the two parts of a mechanism, which allows it to function. Distance is also precisely the condition for a critical gaze. Starting from a historical and conceptual questioning of the relationship between play and work, this book combines the research of a psychologist and a philosopher on the power relations that these relationships induce and the contemporary uses of play, in its sporting as well as theatrical, physical as well as digital forms.

The question of management, central to the contemporary world of work, is addressed both through the psychologist’s reflective experience in the field of business and through its historical roots and connections, from industrial Fordism to political authoritarianism. The book concludes with a reflection on the notion of power games, central to Michel Foucault’s thinking in analyzing contemporary forms of government as well as in supporting the possibility of counter-powers.

Alain Bernardini’s photographic work playfully illuminates the questioning.

HK Destins Schicksale is a literary and photographic journey of discovery and investigation following in the footsteps of Heinrich König, born in Germany, witness, participant, and victim of two world wars, member of the resistance against Nazism who died for France. It is also a quest for the written memories buried in archives where echoes of this paradigmatic European destiny remain. From this patiently collected material, Arno Gisinger and Pierre Rabardel have created a bilingual French-German book, inventing new forms of writing to weave words and images together into a work whose polyphonic power is developed and amplified by contributions from Anne Bationo-Tillon and Florian Ebner.

A new photographer, Vivian Maier, was discovered in 2010 shortly after her death. Tens of thousands of her photographs, most of them undeveloped negatives, were discovered after her death, making her a famous artist. From then on, everyone wondered about this woman’s story and personality, and discovered that she also had a very strong connection to France.

Françoise Perron followed in her footsteps, in New York, Chicago, and the Hautes-Alpes, and collected the stories of those who knew her well in France and the United States, revealing a troubled and endearing personality beyond the caricature of a cantankerous nanny that often circulated about her. From Vivian Maier’s childhood in the Champsaur valley in the 1930s, through her adolescence in a family torn apart, to the young woman who defied the customs of American society in the 1950s, the book traces all the periods of her life. Through the photographer’s prolific work, scattered among various collectors, the book reveals the different facets of her personality: her intelligence and intellectual curiosity.