I was certain that in my lists I would have the phone numbers of the contemporary photographers working with subject matter like that. They were the ones you’d find sniffing or shooting up the bad stuff in evil places so they could feel truly alive and tell themselves that things were really, really tough for them too.

I stopped in front of a monumental print that must have been 3 metres by 2 metres, displayed under Perspex cut into the shape of the African continent and depicting a waste dump of technological products covered in children dressed in rags hurling their anger at the blind lens of the camera fixed on them: 40,000 euros.

Dear God, I feel like gathering them all up in my arms, but there are so many of them...

‘Well, well, hasn’t the price of the poor gone up!’ I said to myself, thinking back to my great-grandfather Botquelen and having a private chuckle.

‘Who do you think would buy that?’ I asked Hildegarde.

‘I dunno, an IT company? A bank? I couldn’t give a shit, it’s sordid, I’d never put it up in my place. Oh, look over there! Dogs —’

And she was off with Juliette to a retrospective of a certain William Wegman, some guy who seemed to have built an entire career out of photographing two grey, rangy mutts. The artist was there at his stand, the poor bastard: Could you guarantee that there is no animal abuse and exploitation involved in your pictures?

‘Go, Hildegarde!’ I thought, ‘Let’s see you give him a serve.’ I was already celebrating.

I took the chance while I was on my own to go to Adrienne de Rigny’s stand just nearby.

They weren’t really photos, what she was exhibiting. Choose your settings, press a button, all that was far too passé for her; the words photographic truth is no longer to be found in the shot but in its appropriation was written at the entrance to the stand just in case somebody (that would be me, seeing as there was nobody else) were to wonder why the artist was exhibiting photographs taken off YouTube. Except that we weren’t talking about any old appropriations; they were images of her uncle and cousin being lynched, which had then been reproduced on a mount that looked like a metal road sign riddled with bullet holes. I discreetly went over to the catalogue to take a look at the price, and an even more discreet gallery assistant appeared out of nowhere to whisper into my ear that Adrienne’s work had been acquired by the Pinault foundation.

‘Must be a friend of the family,’ I said to myself, ‘Because otherwise . . . I don’t get it! We’re talking 15,000 euros.’