More than 300 photosexhibited in ten thematic sections of almost 700 square meters, depict two centuries of war at the Photographies En Guerre exhibition at the Musée de l’Armée, Hôtel national des Invalides in Paris.
The exhibition allows the re-examination of the complex relationship between photography and war in a new semantic environment. «Creating a photograph in 1849 has a different meaning than in 2022 “points out Anthony Petiteau, one of the four curators of the exhibition. “Although these photographs depict the same themes – ruins, destruction – as those familiar to us today, the conceptual context of their creation always influences the message conveyed by these photographs.».
The flood of photographs we are experiencing today has its origins in the Great War, it was the visual recording of the massacres and the horrors of war, both as a memory and as a testimony. «Photographs taken at the time were reused and reinstated in conceptual context by both pacifist and belligerent arguments.“, Underlines Petiteau.
As a result, the report shows the evolution of photo manipulation. For example, the figure of the child witness in the Spanish Civil War, as the curator explains: “The image of the little girl who was the victim of the bombing became the catalyst of the process. Reproduced on postcards and leaflets distributed and promoted abroad. In every conflict there is a war of propaganda as well. The figures of the child and the mother became repetitive patterns in all the wars of the 20th and 21st century».
During the wars in Indochina, only the eyes of the French Armed Forces were available, who exercised control over the production of photographs. Instead, the famous Marc Riboud takes us on a peace march with this famous photo “Young Girl Holding a Flower”, which he took in 1967 at an anti-Vietnam War demonstration.
Robert Capa, Margaret Bourke-White, Lee Miller, Paul Corcuff, Don McCullin, Gilles Caron, Richard Mosse, Laurent Van der Stockt and Yan Moran embody the rebirth of photojournalism. The change was inaugurated by Capa, especially with this famous photograph of him from the Spanish Civil War in which his lens captures the death of a militiaman, a photograph published on Vu and purchased by Life. “The successive use and reuse of these photographs has made them emblems,” says Petiteau. Thanks to their repeated use from within, Joe Rosenthal’s “Raising the Flag in Iwo Jima” and Yevgeny Khaldei “Raising the Flag Over the Reichstag” remain symbols of World War II.
«“Some patterns are repeated over time,” says the curator. “The landscapes of war are timeless and the catastrophe goes beyond historical periods».
The exhibition “Photographies En Guerre” at the Musée de l’Armée, Hôtel national des Invalides closes on 24 July.
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