Published in 2005 by Le Point du jour éditeur, Psychogéographie places Antoine d’Agata’s photography within a politically charged account of urban change. The images were produced במסגרת the Euromed project in Marseille, a public commission intended to document the rehabilitation of central districts considered “anarchic.” Rather than treating redevelopment as neutral progress, the book examines how the reconfigured city acts upon those who inhabit it—and how its official language can conceal social conflict.
Its method is deliberately unstable. Digital experimentation and multiple collages unsettle photography’s conventional claim to authenticate presence, while retaining an attachment to presence as something fragile and embodied. The accompanying phrases, initially presented as anonymous, gradually emerge as the words of residents or politicians; this shift exposes the violence embedded in public descriptions of the city. Image and text therefore operate less as explanation than as confrontation, producing a political photomontage informed by early Situationism.
The book’s title invokes psychogeography as the study of the effects—consciously planned or otherwise—that geographical surroundings exert on individual feeling and conduct. D’Agata adapts that premise to the contemporary city, contesting utilitarian urbanism through a disruptive, sometimes hallucinatory relation between document and fiction. The images do not promise a more authentic truth beneath redevelopment, nor do they romanticize ruins. Their force lies in making the city’s constructed reality and the form of its denunciation reflect one another.
For collectors, Psychogéographie deserves attention as a compact, French-language collaboration between photographic practice, political montage, and urban critique. Its 2005 paperback format, 78-page extent, and approximately 30.5 × 23.5 cm dimensions give the work a clear bibliographic identity, while its sustained tension between evidence and manipulation places it within an important strand of conceptually engaged photobook-making.
