May 68

The media played a major role in the events of May 1968. While the popular posters of the times depicted the French riot police manning the microphones at the ORTF (French broadcasting service), the papers and the radio stations took up the defence of the students. Bruno Barbey photographed the daily life of the protesters, students and factory workers, immortalizing key moments. He recorded nights full of violence and confrontation over the course of these months whose events reverberated to the very heart of State power. Combat was the only newspaper on the side of the young. Philippe Tesson, its editor-in-chief, relates his memories of the time in a never-beforepublished account. May 68 brings together the contemporary eye of Barbey and the pen of Tesson who, fifty years later, reflect upon those few weeks that shook France to its core.