May 1968

The media played a major role in the events of May 1968, both for the government and the demonstrators. While the popular posters of the times depicted the CRS (French riot police) manning the microphones at the ORTF (French broadcasting service), the papers and the radio stations took up the defence of the student protestors.

Bruno Barbey of the Magnum Agency covered the events until mid-June. He captured the daily life of the protesters, students, and factory workers, immortalising 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.

From the very beginning of the protests, the entire press corps seized upon the events, but only the daily newspaper Combat, created during the Second World War, was on the side of the young—or at least until the violence erupted. Philippe Tesson, who was Editor-in-Chief at the time, relates his memories of the time in an account never before published.

May 68: at the Heart of the Student Revolt brings together the contemporary eye of Barbey and the pen of Tesson who, fifty years later, reflects upon those few weeks that shook France to its core.