Published in 1998 by En vues, Antoine d’Agata’s Mala noche emerged following the Marseille photographer’s breakthrough at the 1997 Festival des Continents photo in Nantes. Spanning 103 pages in a hardcover format, the volume gathers black-and-white photographs made during extensive journeys through Mexico and scorched borderlands, presenting an unflinching visual record rooted in direct personal immersion.

Working in a lineage linked to Robert Frank and Eugene Richards, d’Agata approaches his subjects with raw, frontal framing and stark compositional tension. His imagery navigates an underworld of brothels, desolate cantinas, nocturnal specters, and extreme destitution, eschewing detached observation in favor of immediate encounter. The French-language publication integrates photographic sequences alongside literary contributions, incorporating travel notes by Bruno Le Dantec and Mexican author José Agustín’s short story, Un cadavre sera transporté par voie express.

For collectors of contemporary photobooks, Mala noche represents a pivotal foundational work in d’Agata’s career. The combination of intense black-and-white imagery and narrative prose lends the book a distinct cinematic weight, marking an essential early entry in the literature of subjective, experiential documentary photography.