Photographies en guerre

Photographies en guerre : Léon-Eugène Méhédin, Sébastopol : vue de la ville et du port, 1855 © Paris - Musée de l’Armée, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais - Christian Moutarde    Photographies en guerre : Joe Rosenthal, U.S. Marines of the 28th Regiment, 5th Division, raise the American flag atop Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima, on Feb. 23, 1945 © National Archives and Records Administration / DR   


The exhibition


war on war

At its birth, war photography, handicapped by a stammering technique and infinite exposure times, neglected the nudes and the dead to document only the daily life of the conflicts. The grueling retrospective at the Musée de l'Armée places the rise of the genre in the middle of the 19th century, at the time of the Crimean War, when Léon-Eugène Méhédin, sent by Napoleon III to document the ferocity of the Russians, produced a panoramic – actually a photomontage – of devastated Sevastopol. But blood quickly calls for blood. In 1859, Jules Couppier took the first stereoscopic view of French and Austrian corpses entangled in a mass grave in Melegnano, during the Italian Unity.

See also: Women War Photographers. Paris Liberation Museum. Until December 31, 2022

Excerpt from Emmanuel Daydé's article published in N°101 of Art Absolument magazine.

When


06/04/2022 - 24/07/2022
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