This thesis explores the agency and practices of visual material in the construction of collective memory and national identity. It is grounded in the case study of one particular institution, the Centre national de l’audiovisuel (CNA) in Luxembourg, and in the institutional life and transformations of a specific body of images, Luxembourg’s Amateur Film Collection and the exhibition Hidden Images mounted in 2007. The CNA is Luxembourg’s central repository for film, photography and sound documents brought together under the rubric of ‘national heritage’. The amateur film archive comprises today about 10.000 objects from the 1920s to the mid 1970s. Made in Luxembourg or by people from Luxembourg, the movies, and even more so the film stills as a condensed version of the archive, represent the nation, yet as an ensemble they remain contained, making a close examination possible. I consider in this context that images are not however only indexical referents, but also, and especially, bundled objects existing materially in the world, entangled in a complex tissue of social interactions and practices, tensioned between document and art work and interwoven with shifting institutional aspirations. Drawing on the work of Ingold, I characterize this as a meshwork, in which everything is connected and visual objects evolve organically, subject to internal and external influences. Thus, this thesis observes the private family films as they meet and mesh with the public institution CNA where they develop new agency as historical documents, as works of art or triggers of collective memory. It explores the filmed material in relation to the national and institutional politics of the CNA’s emergence, the shifting culture of curatorial intention and ambition for the collection, the hierarchies of information within CNA. By making visible the lines, the connections and the nodes of this meshwork, as well as its patterns of disruption and fracture, this study highlights the varying interactions with Luxembourg’s Amateur Film Collection in particular, and, more generally, the performative nature of family photographs and films as they are used to construct images of nationality. The small scale of Luxembourg as a nation-state presents a demonstrable case study of the ecology of images in national identity building and makes an unusually grounded contribution to the wider debate about the ways in which images strengthen a sense of belonging, and how archives and museums use photography and film to construct and articulate visions of nationhood.

Bien que le continuum discursif de l’information télévisée soit marqué par un rituel quotidien, il inscrit les événements dans différents niveaux de profondeur pathémiques. Lors de grandes catastrophes telles que le tsunami d’Asie du Sud-Est de 2004 ou le 11 septembre de 2001, le degré de profondeur atteint semble avoir cristallisé une forme particulière, que le travail de thèse désigne comme information d’urgence, à l’égard de laquelle il s’attache à dessiner les plans conceptuels et définitionnels. Majoritairement manifestée par l’immixtion massive d’images d’amateurs, l’information d’urgence installe des conditions de lecture capables d’élever le pathos à son paroxysme, sur le fond d’une vérité probatoire qui plonge ses racines dans les pratiques sociales/culturelles. Alors qu’ils filtrent la « bonne » réception de l’image, comment les signes de l’imperfectibilité (caractéristiques de ces images) arrivent-ils à renvoyer au monde naturel avec une vérité saisissante ? Comment participent-ils à l’élaboration de la visée pragmatique de l’urgence ? Constituent-ils une autonomie ? En s’appuyant sur un corpus télévisuel de différents pays (France, Portugal et États-Unis), l’exploration des éléments constitutifs de l’information d’urgence guide la réflexion au-delà de la strate sémio-textuelle, vers l’analyse du paradigme communicationnel. En conséquence, s’inscrivant dans une polyphonie sémiotique (autour du verbal, du visuel et des pratiques), cette traversée interrogera les plans d’immanence avant de conduire à une définition stable du syntagme information d’urgence / Despite being a discursive continuum, broadcasted news is marked by daily ritual; it inscribes events into various pathemic depth levels. When catastrophes such as the 2004 South-Asian tsunami or the 9/11 attacks of 2001 occur, the depth level that is reached seems to crystallize into a specific form. My thesis work has led me to conceptualize this particular form as “emergency news” (information d’urgence) and the research aims at defining its conceptual and constitutive traits.“Emergency news” is mainly characterized by a significant amount of amateur images, intermingled with standard professional images. “Emergency news” thus sets up interpretation/reception conditions which in turn are able to heighten pathos to its maximum, within a background frame consisting of a proven truth rooted into social and cultural practices. When signs of imperfection —which are characteristic of amateur images— filter the “right” image reception, how can they reflect the natural world in a strikingly realistic way? How do they contribute to the pragmatic aims of urgency and emergency? Do they work in an autonomous manner? Based on a corpus composed of broadcasted images and news reports from three different countries (France, Portugal and the United States), the exploration of the various elements constitutive of “emergency news” guides the reflexion beyond the semio-textual strata, toward the analysis of the communicational paradigm. Thus, with its inscription in semiotic polyphony (revolving around the visual, the verbal and practices), this journey will question planes of immanence before leading to a stable definition of the “emergency news” syntagm