Les Carnets du BAL is a series set up to work on what is at stake in the contemporary image and to take the notion of the visual document in all its variety. Each subject brings together theoretical contributions and presentations and readings of works by artists, philosophers, historians, anthropologists and critics, drawing on examples from photography, video and cinema. This first volume comes out of the seminar held at La Fémis in November 2009 and takes the pair that runs through any documentary work: reality and fiction, both of them ways of getting hold of the real, and present in any such work to differing degrees. What it shows is how rich that entanglement is, in theory and in practice.