In photography's early days, long exposure times favoured serious faces; as technique evolved, it became possible to capture the flash of a smile, a suspended moment, barely begun or about to fade, guessed in a look or on lips. This book gathers thirty-two portraits by thirty-two photographers, most drawn from books already published by Filigranes, each image the fruit of an encounter between a photographer and a sitter, no self-portraits or selfies, only a pure exchange of emotion immortalised by photography.