Photographs: Henri Cartier-Bresson, Jean Bourgeois, Bruno Barbey
And yet, how rare were the references to the great names of
ideology – Marx, Lenin, Mao, even Che Guevara – on the walls of Paris. They would later appear on badges and
T-shirts, as icons symbolizing the overthrow of systems. The student rebels reminded theorists of a
long-forgotten Bakuninist anarchism, but if anything they were closest to the
‘situationists’, who had anticipated a ‘revolution of everyday life’ through
the transformation of personal relations.
That (and their Gallic brilliance at devising memorable slogans) is why
they became the mouthpiece of an otherwise inchoate movement, although it is
almost certain that hardly anyone until then had heard of them, outside a small
circle of left-wing painters. (I
certainly had not.)
Hobsbawm, Eric. (2002).
Interesting Times, A Twentieth
Century Life. London. Penguin Press. P.248.
