04/11/2017, From 28 April to 1 October 2017, the Verdun Memorial Museum presents the temporary exhibition War Photographers – 160 Years Through the Lens. Organised in collaboration with the Institute for Audiovisual Communication and Production of the French Defence Ministry (ECPAD), the project considers the nature of those who head for war, camera in hand.
With a chronological presentation of works by sixteen photographers, the exhibition spans from the Crimean War in 1855 to the present day. Original prints and reproductions are complemented by press cuttings, while displays of the photographic equipment used throughout the eras serve to illustrate the development of different techniques. Personal items and documents along with a collection of portraits convey a vivid sense of the selected photographers: Roger Fenton, Mathew Brady, Felice Beato, Jimmy Hare, Gérald Michel, Jean-Baptiste Tournassoud, Edouard Brissy, Charles Grauss, Robert Capa, Germaine Kanova, Raoul Coutard, Gilles Caron, Patrick Baz, Véronique de Viguerie, Edouard Elias and army photographers, represented by three photographers of the ECPAD.
The exhibition is rounded off by 24 portraits of contemporary war photographers, created by film director and photographer Alizé Le Maoult. The full face views are taken with a Leica against the background of a plain wall, so that the reporters appear to be looking straight into the eyes of the observer.
For further details visit Mémorial de Verdun
War reporters Brigitte Friang and Raoul Coutard, French-Indochina, 1953
© ECPAD / Paul CorcuffPhotographer in a trench, Saint-Thomas-en-Argonne © Edouard Brissy / Collection Létant
Battlefield of Gettysburg. Bodies of dead Federal soldiers on the field of the first day's battle, 1863 / Mathew Brady © Library of Congress
The photographic van with Martin Sparling on the box, Crimea, 1855 © Roger Fenton / Library of Congress
Watercolour painting “First Aid” , a caricature of war photographers by Maurice Toussaint © Mémorial de Verdun
Mémorial de Verdun
© JM Mangeot