Œil pour Œil

The result of a close collaboration between Rencontres d'Arles, the Institut pour la photographie des Hauts-de-France and Orbe, a collective of artists, game designers and scientists working on digital experiments involving the body, Œil pour Œil is an application for learning to read and practice photographic images, co-written with photographers who playfully share their approach, their vision and the way they think about and construct their images.

For the first two chapters of this tool, Charlotte Abramow and Matthieu Gafsou, two photographers with very different approaches and practices, accompany users in the discovery of their photographic work and guide them, step by step, through their shooting protocol.

Downloadable from Google Play and App Store, Œil pour Œil can be used by children aged 8 and over, alone or in a group. The application comprises two successive phases:

• The jumble, dedicated to discovering the world of photographers: when and how were the photographs taken? In what context? What are the intentions behind the images? Participants can listen at their own pace to the photographers' accounts of the production process, and as they go along, identify an image that seems to fit the story.

• The protocol, dedicated to a time of practice, guided by the photographer's voice.Each protocol is developed from audio and written instructions, which stimulate observation, creativity, intuition and thought in each participant. At the end of the protocol, participants are invited to take photographs. Matthieu Gafsou's protocol can be carried out individually, while Charlotte Abramow's is a duet: a model and a photographer. Matthieu Gafsou invites us to explore the environment in a sensitive, moving way. Charlotte Abramow, on the other hand, offers an introduction to photographic staging through a variation on the Chinese portrait.

The app also includes a photographic lexicon of terms essential to making the medium more accessible.