At the trial of the November 13 attacks, “the decisive moment” captured by Daniel Psenny, former journalist of “Le Monde” – Le Monde

Daniel Psenny, 64, had lived for forty-five years in Passage Saint-Pierre-Amelot, on the second floor of a building overlooking the emergency exits of the Bataclan. On November 13, 2015, he was writing an article for The world, his employer from 1997 to 2018, when the first Kalashnikov shots rang out.

Him, the former photographer, having for reference Henri Cartier-Bresson and his “Decisive moment”, then grabbed his cell phone to grab one from his window. “The war had settled in my street”, he explains at the bar, at the trial of the November 13 attacks, Tuesday October 19. Film rather than shelter: a “Journalistic reflex”, a “Way of witnessing”, without really knowing what, since he does not know what he is filming, “If not an episode of very great violence”, of which he was both “Witness, actor, victim and miracle worker”.

“I am shocked by these images that I made myselfhe said. I see as a citizen what I filmed as a journalist. I beg your pardon, because these images are really very violent. Even with hindsight, they still haunt me. ” THE’“Decisive moment” lasts six minutes, which have, in part, been around the world.

On the giant screen, we see again. The two side emergency exits of the Bataclan and the entrance of the artists who spit out dozens and dozens of spectators, against a background of detonations, panicked calls for help, appalling howls.

We flee at full speed, we hide where we can, in the recess of a porte-cochere, behind a trash can. Three people pull a fourth by the arms, its inert body leaves a long red trail on the asphalt. A voice calls desperately: “Oscar! Oscar! “ A man hops up the street as best he can. On the second floor of the Bataclan, two people are standing on a window sill outside. At the window next door, a woman hangs from the parapet with her fingertips.

“If I fall, I die”

Six times Daniel Psenny asks: ” What is happening ? “ “They’re shooting at us!” “, ends up answering someone. The “Oscar! Oscar! “ continue. “I’m going to let go, I’m pregnant, I beg you”, said the woman, suspended in the void, softly. One of the two men on the next window sill comes in and pulls her into the hallway. Nothing can be seen from inside the Bataclan, but as the president of the Assize Court, Jean-Louis Périès, will point out, these images of chaos say so. “A lot, a lot, a lot, about what happened that night”.

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