WOMEN WAR PHOTOGRAPHERS
Lee Miller, Gerda Taro, Catherine Leroy, Christine Spengler, Françoise Demulder, Susan Meiselas, Carolyn Cole, Anja Niedringhaus Exhibition co-organized with the Kunstpalast of Düsseldorf
With this new exhibition, the Musée de la Libération de Paris - Musée du Général Leclerc'- Musée Jean Moulin continues to explore history by presenting the works of eight renowned women photographers who covered 75 years of international conflicts between 1936 and 2011: Lee Miller (1907-1977), Gerda Taro (1910-1937), Catherine Leroy (1944-2006), Christine Spengler (b. 1945), Françoise Demulder (1947-2008), Susan Meiselas (b. 1948), Carolyn Cole (b. 1961)and Anja Niedringhaus (1965-2014). With the help of a hundred documents, more than 80 photographs, as well as a dozen original newspapers and magazines, the exhibition highlights the involvement of women in all the conflicts, whether they were combatants, victims or witnesses.
A DIFFERENT LOOK?
Although war photography is a male-dominated profession, many women photographers have worked in war zones. They have documented the world's crises and have played a decisive role in shaping the image of war. In the territories of con'it, unlike men, these women often had access to families, of which they took particularly moving portraits. They were also active at the front and took pictures of war victims that do not spare the observer.
By highlighting the pictures and the paths of these eight women war photographers, the exhibition confronts the visitor with a shared view of the violence of war. It questions the notion of gender, interrogates the specificity of the female gaze on war, overturns certain stereotypes, and shows that women are as much transmitters of images as witnesses of the atrocious. On the fronts for nearly a century, they take pictures without hiding the horror of the events. Some of them lost their lives.
The exhibition addresses a problem shared by war correspondents: how to bear witness to the savagery of war? Should we use a raw vision or a formal euphemism?
These photographers, whose works range from the European con'its of the 1930s and 1940s to the most recent international wars, use a great stylistic and narrative variety. Their approaches alternate between maintaining an objective distance, observation and personal involvement. The photographs include intimate glimpses of daily life during the war as well as testimonies of atrocities or references to the absurdity of war and its consequences. Christine Spengler does not show the charred bodies but the ruins of Phnom Penh, which touch the viewer without making the cruelty of the scene explicit. The corpses photographed by Gerda Taro or by Carolyn Cole more than 70 years later are just as disturbing. The approach of the former is frontal, while the latter gives an aesthetic and calm effect to her shots. Catherine Leroy chooses the immediate proximity with her subject and her images challenge.
The image and its diffusion
The last point on which this exhibition challenges: the reframing of the photograph and its staging to adapt it to the needs of the press.
The photographs presented are so many images ÿes, framed, potentially constructed by a glance or by a subjective media diffusion. It is a question that sends us back to our own tools of analysis of the news.
Each of the photographers presented in the exhibition testifies with her particular style to the suffering caused by wars. Their production must however take into account the economic realities. Employed by agencies or press titles, they must provide "publishable" images, obeying the criteria in force at the time they took the photographs. It was
The emblematic image of the Beirut neighborhood taken by Françoise Demulder was not retained by her agency, because the intentions of the photographers are not necessarily those that the media wish to promote. This does not prevent them from choosing their subjects and proposing very personal images.
These photographers wish to contribute to making public what is really happening on the battlefield and behind the front.
The exhibition allows us to understand the way in which these images taken on the spot are treated by the press.
PHOTOGRAPHY: A TOOL FOR DECIPHERING HISTORY
The images of these women war photographers bring the viewer face to face with the fate of individuals and history. The visitor understands the specificity of each of the con'its covered, and yet a certain overview emerges. One sees little by little a professionalization of the con'its, an armament always more technological of the Western armies in response to a threat always more complex to apprehend. The relationship between the belligerents never appears symmetrical in these photographs: the con'its oppose traditional armies ofÿcielles and poorly equipped combatants. Gerda Taro depicts the Spanish Republican People's Army, sometimes unarmed, Lee Miller barely shows the routed German soldiers of the Second World War. The impression of imbalance is accentuated by Catherine Leroy's brutal images showing the disproportion between the Vietcong fighters and the American Marines. Susan Meiselas photographs rebel guerrillas in Nicaragua. But it is undoubtedly the images of Anja Niedringhaus that highlight the inconsistency of the over-armament of American and Canadian soldiers in the face of an elusive enemy in Iraq (2004) or Afghanistan (2011).
These photographs speak of con'its near and far, some of which seem to no longer exist. They reposition the Second World War in the broader context of the wars of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and show the deep roots of the confrontations that shake the planet.
The value of these images goes far beyond their informative quality, as they also teach us how the eye of these women war photographers has been sharpened over time, dealing with their quality as women, their perception of operations and the sensitivity of the public. Their views enrich the narrative of the Musée de la Libération de Parisf -f musée du général Leclercf-fmusée Jean Moulin on contemporary con'its and give new keys to its visitors to understand the "noise and fury" of the world.
GENERAL COMMISSARIAT: Sylvie Zaidman, historian, general curator, director of the Musée de la Libération de Paris - Musée du Général Leclerc - Musée Jean Moulin
SCIENTIFIC CURATOR :
Felicity Korn, advisor to the Director General of the of the Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf, Germany
Anne-Marie Beckmann,
Director of the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation in Frankfurt, Germany
Susan Meiselas, Sandinistas in front of the National Guard headquarters in Estelí. Nicaragua, July 1979 © Susan Meiselas/Magnum Photos infos
EIGHT WOMEN, EIGHT PATHS
Lee Miller (1907-1977)
Lee Miller, an American born in 1907, began her career as a model. She began her apprenticeship as a photographer with Man Ray in Paris in the late 1930s, then opened her own studio before perfecting her skills in New York. Hired by Vogue, she became an accredited war correspondent for the U.S. Army in 1942 and covered the liberation of Europe and the discovery of concentration camps.
Gerda Taro (1910-1937)
Gerda Taro is a photographer born in Germany in 1910, who emigrated to Paris in 1933. She worked with Robert Capa and became a photographer. She left to cover the Spanish Civil War in 1936 with Capa and Seymour for the French communist press. Wounded to death in Brunete in July 1937, she is probably the first woman war photographer killed on the front.
Catherine Leroy (1944-2006)
Born in Paris, Catherine Leroy was accredited as a press photographer in 1966 and covered the Vietnam War until 1969; she was briefly a prisoner of the Vietcong in 1968. She also photographed the con'it in Lebanon. Catherine Leroy was the first woman to receive the Robert Capa Gold Medal in 1976.
Christine Spengler (born 1945)
After studying languages, Christine Spengler went to Chad where she became a war photographer. She covers multiple con'its, in Europe (that of Northern Ireland in 1972), in Asia in Vietnam and Cambodia, in Africa (in the Western Sahara), in the Middle East, in Afghanistan, in Iraq. She has worked for Corbis Sygma, Sipa press and Associated-Press.
Françoise Demulder (1947-2008)
Françoise Demulder studied philosophy before going to Vietnam to photograph the war. She works for the Gamma agency. She then went to Cambodia, Angola, Lebanon and Iraq. In 1977, she was the first woman photographer to receive the World Press Award.
Susan Meiselas (born 1948)
Susan Meiselas is an American with a degree in visual arts. She produced several series on women in the United States before joining the Magnum agency. She covered con'it areas in South America (Nicaragua, El Salvador) and was awarded the Robert Capa Gold Medal in 1979.
Carolyn Cole (born 1961)
Carolyn Cole studied photojournalism in the United States. After working as a photographer for several newspapers, she joined the staff of the Los Angeles Times in 1994. She was a war reporter in Kosovo, then photographed the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. She received the Pulitzer Prize for her reportage in Liberia.
Anja Niedringhaus (1965-2014)
Anja Niedringhaus is German and studied philosophy and journalism. In 1990, she was the first woman to be hired by the European Pressphoto Agency. In 2002, she worked for the Associated-Press. She travelled to Yugoslavia, Iraq, the Middle East and Libya. She was killed in combat in Afghanistan in 2014.
MUSEUM OF THE LIBERATION OF PARIS " GENERAL LECLERC MUSEUM " JEAN MOULIN MUSEUM
4, avenue du Colonel Rol Tanguy Place Denfert Rochereau 75014 Paris 01 71 28 34 70 museeliberation-leclerc-moulin.paris.fr
. Tuesday to Sunday from 10 am to 6 pm. Free access to the permanent collections. Visit of the PC Rol-Tanguy free on reservation on the spot. Exhibition prices : Full : 8 € / Reduced : 6 €.