Art Of The Day Weekly

WWI, one century later

PARIS – How can we speak about World War I a century after it occurred? This challenge is met by certain contemporary photographers who have various « strategies » to refer to this past event. They (Bréson for example) scrutinize the landscape in search of traces of the conflagration – some of them are still perfectly visible. Others (like Bard) explore the cemeteries and stained glass windows of churches, and discover the fine thread of these lives that were taken. Lastly, others like Ventura or Fleisher with an installation of portraits of the of the dead floating in a revealing bath, believe that fiction can say as much as reality and they rebuild certain scenes, referring to atmospheres. These are all means of setting the memory which is altered and nourished by the passage of time.
• Mémoire traversée, paysage, visage de la Grande Guerre at Eléphant Paname, from 31 October 2014 to 18 January 2015.

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