Traces of 14-18

Among the books on the Great War which appeared on the occasion of the eightyth anniversary of the Armistice of November 11 is distinguished an album in original format. From the outset, the cover sets the tone of the work. Depending on the light, the thick gray box more or less brings out the title in silver letters: Scars. The Great War today. The names of the authors, in small black letters, are more discreet. A tangle of barbed wire comes to print on the whole, underlined on the left by the strip of black fabric which envelops the binding. The war, the wound, death and memory are thus gathered in a striking way on a square cover with the appearance of an invitation.

A land that keeps its wounds

At the heart of this book is the question of what remains of the Great War and its wounds. The answer is organized around the photographs of Jean Richardot, who lent himself to a sort of memorial report in the footsteps of 14-18 fighters. As a time travel, he offers us contact with the authentic traces of this warrior past. These traces are both landscapes and fortifications, ruins, or artillery or abandoned objects. Some persist in the raw state, others carry the patina of time, others still seem about to disappear. In small touches are thus emerging the contours of an often poorly known heritage, made of buried vestiges, sometimes unalterable and sometimes fragile. Throughout the 2000s, the photographer surveyed the area, located in France, of the old battlefields. He had to leave the beaten track, get lost in the open countryside or get bogged down in the undergrowth to discover a land that keeps his injuries. Because it is the land which it is primarily here. It was once she who hid and protected men, in trenches and shelters that formed as many hollow fortifications. Today it is she who continues to carry the marks of the conflict, which keeps the objects and bodies buried, which regularly makes part of this macabre loot. To observe it is therefore to apprehend at least a part of the terrible reality of the conflict. It is revealing that the photographer, looking for a title for the exhibition of his shots, first thought of “ The earth remembers »» ; As if it was she who was to remain the last witness.

The result takes the form of beautiful black and white photographs, the grain of which is admirably rendered by the quality of the print and printing. The formats on a page, sometimes two, allow comfortable visualization and access to details. These images have at first glance a strong evocation power. At the sight of certain shelters, burial is not an empty word and the look of the photographer arouses a real revelation. Elsewhere, ravaged landscapes refer to the relentlessness of fighting to artillery, while clusters of shells reflect the material reality of industrial war. At the bend of the pages and the old combat sites, the depth of the funnels, the thicknesses of sliced ​​metal, the twisted steel stems and the cracked concrete give a concrete idea of ​​the formidable violence of the explosions. This informative aspect undoubtedly makes these images a fertile educational support, especially as we often feel the fine rain and the sticky mud, the snow and the cold piercing and, therefore, the horror of life in the forehead. In this regard, the words engraved at the entrance of the shelters and on the walls of the Creutes give an overview of the pride, hopes and anxieties of men formerly entrenched there. Finally, the tombs, which remained dispersed or grouped in cemeteries, recall the multitude of mowed destinies in these regions.

But Jean Richardot’s photographs are also the fruit of aesthetic research. His shots reveal in particular a long work on the lights, shapes and textures. Although any staging is absent from its approach, each painting seems meticulously composed, in a tangle of mineral and plant elements – human activity is only visible through its traces. The fact remains that the exclusive use of black and white tends to derect the subject. Perhaps the color, by bringing out the young shoots in the middle of the debris or the foam which covers the tombstones, would have aroused more nostalgia than the photographer wanted it. Black and white refers to a certain timelessness, to the point that one wonders when when these shots date: the bottles of wine abandoned at the foot of a tree are not even covered by the dead leaves.

Give meaning to enigmatic vestiges

Consequently, the photographs deserved a comment that was able to both put them in context and explain them in detail. This commentary is that of Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Gerd Krumeich, two historians who work together in the Historial of the Great War of Péronne. One is French, the other is German: their double glance is enriched by a binational perspective to analyze the traces of a war which was largely, and particularly on this western front, a Franco-German confrontation. Their presentation commune (underlined by them in the preface) covers two aspects.

On the one hand, each image is interpreted by a legend which complements the strict indication of a place. However, the images of Jean Richardot most often contain a war story in germ: the trench was inhabited, the grenade has passed through the hand of a soldier, the shell was fired by a cannon, the ruin is the fruit of a fight, the grave represents the term of a life. When it comes to a site or a landscape, this story includes factual information: we learn what happened at the image of the image and on what date. Enigmatic vestiges, such as the portal of the old Soupir castle in Aisne, or mysterious reliefs, like that of the Grande Mine in Ovillers-La-Boissel in the Somme, then take meaning. These legends are all the more appreciable since the attention paid by the photographer to the earth and to what it collects involves tight framing and enclosed fields, which makes the insertion of images difficult in an overall vision. When it comes to objects or places of life, the comment is more circumspect. The information then alternates with the questions, to which the “ maybe “And the” undoubtedly Answer as many hypotheses on the origin, the use and the meaning to be given to the constructions, inscriptions and utensils that remain on the old front. The two authors then put forward “ The always acting mystery of the Great War “Who would hire the historian today and his reader to” A great effort of imagination ». The approach is therefore subjective. In front of the barbed wire of Fort de Vaux, here we are in the shoes of the fighters ready to set off outside the trench. This is undoubtedly an effective way to revive “ the terror and the courage of the fighters », At the risk, however, of lending them feelings that they have probably unevenly shared.

On the other hand, the photographs are grouped by themes: barbed wire, cemeteries, tombs, ruins, concrete, words, debris, shelters, metal, trenches, ammunition, imprints. Some of these categories may seem redundant or artificial: shelters can indeed be made of concrete and carry inscriptions, barbed wire and debris are never far from the trenches. However, there was a principle of organization and this one makes it possible to group the images in chapters and to complete each of them with a very welcome thematic development. The most interesting explanations are the most technical, especially on the organization of the trenches system, unequally widespread use of reinforced concrete or the ever more sophisticated use of barbed wire, as many symbols of a war of position easier to accept for invaders than for invads. Other useful developments concern the role of necropolises of the front in the collectivization of death and the staging of the nation, while the isolated tombs bear more the personal dimension of loss even if the social norm pierces there through the agreed language of sacrifice. Note that the binational gaze of the two authors does not always protect them from a certain Francocentrism. This is directly sensitive when the “ 1914 fighter “Supervitiously used to actually designate the” French fighter from 1914 », To which the fighters of other nations are then faced (for example about cemeteries). But this is just a detail.

Because in total, this set of photographs and texts is a very beautiful album. We could certainly regret that the contextualization of the images is not even more precise: thus, a map of the old battlefields, locating the location of the shots, could have benefited the whole advantageously. However, despite everything it contains, you have to see this work for what it claims to be. Its ambition is less educational than emotional. This is evidenced by the thematic organization which repels the explanations at the end of the chapters or the general tone of the work, often disillusioned before the observation of the oblivion which wins and the traces which are inexorably erased. This beautiful book is above all an invitation to become aware of the heritage that remains on the old battlefields, in the idea of ​​making it known and preserving it. In this perspective, photographs must above all give birth to an emotion to arouse an interest: therefore, the word of historians remains secondary.