Olivier Richon’s photographic work proposes an investigation and celebration of the artifice of representations. He uses a large format camera to quote genres and other images. The series Iconologia contains multi-layered, fragmentary and ambiguous references to other texts and arts. This work makes reference to the 18th-century novel Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne, a pioneering book about writing a novel and deconstructing its structure at the same time. It is nowadays described as the first postmodern text.

Sterne occasionally abandons words in favour of diagrams. Richon's photographic image refers to an episode towards the end of the novel, where Uncle Toby's friend Corporal Trim waves a stick to demonstrate the benefits of remaining single rather than marrying the Widow Wadman (Volume IX, Chapter IV):

"Nothing, continued the Corporal, can be so sad as confinement for life -- or so sweet, please your honour, as liberty.
Nothing, Trim -- said my uncle Toby, musing --
Whilst a man is free -- cried the Corporal, giving a flourish with his stick thus --

[...]

A thousand of my father's most subtle syllogisms could not have said more for celibacy."

Another photograph by Richon, Tabula Geographica (E.1599-1991), incorporates a diagram where Sterne attempts to show the path the story has taken so far (Volume VI, Chapter XL). The photograph's accompanying text also refers to one of the novel's main themes, the romance between the Widow Wadman and Uncle Toby.