In early 2019, French Magnum photographer Antoine d’Agata and French-Tunisian author, philosopher, and actor Mehdi Belhaj Kacem drove through the region known in France as the diagonal du vide, or ‘empty diagonal’. Stretching across the nation – from the Belgian border in the north-east to the Pyrenees in the south-west – the disparate geographies of the area are unified by a low-density of industry, population and media coverage.

Sharing the responsibilities of driving the pair navigated this ‘ghost’ France, as Belhaj Kacem calls it. In the writer’s view this is the France that is home to the underrepresented, the politically expendable. This is the France to which the birthing and powering of the nation’s ongoing anti-government gilets jaunes (yellow vests) protests are attributed. Those protests, which started in late 2018 – initially in protest at rising petrol taxes, and continue today across the country.

What follows is a selection of d’Agata’s images from the 339 towns, villages and hamlets the pair passed through, accompanied by Belhaj Kacem’s essay on the diagonale and it’s role – and that of areas like it – in France’s current political face-off.

D’Agata will – alongside Sohrab Hura – be leading a London workshop on alternative approaches to photography in June. More information can be found here.