COLLECTION SFP - Mot-clé - first world war<p>ACTUALITÉS DE LA SOCIÉTÉ FRANÇAISE DE PHOTOGRAPHIE</p>2024-03-25T17:55:32+01:00Société française de photographie (SFP), Paris, Franceurn:md5:12b9090e33ddd6f31a6edee0c681de61Dotclear"One of the most intriguing shows at this year's Rencontres d'Arles photo-festival" (Theguardian.com)urn:md5:3b347b6f7bb784e94c068e9df7d148c02014-07-18T12:52:00+02:002016-05-14T22:13:26+02:00Luce LEBARTexpositionfirst world wargimpelguerre des gossesrencontres d Arles 2014the guardian<p>" Tucked away in a dark room in the Église des Frères Prêcheurs in Arles, next to a much bigger exhibition of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/firstworldwar" title="More from the Guardian on First world war">first world war</a> monuments by <a href="http://www.rencontres-arles.com/C.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=ARLAR1_52_VForm&FRM=Frame:ARLAR1_59" title="">Rayond Depardon</a>, is a small show of a series of autochromes by Léon Gimpel. Entitled <a href="http://www.rencontres-arles.com/C.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=ARLAR1_52_VForm&FRM=Frame:ARLAR1_59#/CMS3&VF=ARLAR1_52_VForm&FRM=Frame:ARLAR1_95" title="">Kids at War</a>, it is one of the most intriguing shows at this year's <a href="http://www.rencontres-arles.com/" title="">Rencontres d'Arles photo-festival</a>." (Sean O'Hagan, Theguardian.com, thursday 10 july 2014)</p> <div id="article-header"><div id="main-article-info">
<br />by Sean O'Hagan, Theguardian.com, thursday 10 july 2014<h1 itemprop="https://sfp.asso.fr/blog-collection/?post/2014/07/18/name headline ">War games: the strange story of Léon Gimpel and the Parisian street kids</h1>
<div itemprop="https://sfp.asso.fr/blog-collection/?post/2014/07/18/description" id="stand-first" class="stand-first-alone" data-component="Article:standfirst_cta">This year's <a href="http://www.rencontres-arles.com/">Recontres d'Arles</a>
is full of surprises, including this oddity – in 1915, photographer
Léon Gimpel directed a gang of street children and created surreal
tableaux that mirrored the realities of war raging elsewhere on the
continent</div>
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</div><ul class="article-attributes trackable-component b4" data-component="Article:byline"><li class="publication">
<a itemprop="https://sfp.asso.fr/blog-collection/?post/2014/07/18/publisher" href="http://www.theguardian.com/">theguardian.com</a>,
<time itemprop="https://sfp.asso.fr/blog-collection/?post/2014/07/18/datePublished" datetime="2014-07-10T17:22BST" pubdate="">Thursday 10 July 2014 17.22 BST</time>
</li>
</ul>
<div id="main-content-picture" itemscope="" itemprop="https://sfp.asso.fr/blog-collection/?post/2014/07/18/image" itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject">
<img src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/7/10/1405008086553/Arles-2014-Gimpel-008.jpg" alt="Arles 2014: Gimpel" itemprop="https://sfp.asso.fr/blog-collection/?post/2014/07/18/contentUrl representativeOfPage" data-pin-description="Les Enfants et la Guerre. Photograph: Léon Gimpel/collection Société française de photographie, Paris
" height="276" width="460" />
<div class="caption" itemprop="https://sfp.asso.fr/blog-collection/?post/2014/07/18/caption">Les Enfants et la Guerre. Photograph: Léon Gimpel/collection Société française de photographie, Paris
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<p>Tucked away in a dark room in the Église des Frères Prêcheurs in Arles, next to a much bigger exhibition of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/firstworldwar" title="More from the Guardian on First world war">first world war</a> monuments by <a href="http://www.rencontres-arles.com/C.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=ARLAR1_52_VForm&FRM=Frame:ARLAR1_59" title="">Rayond Depardon</a>, is a small show of a series of autochromes by Léon Gimpel.</p>
<p>Entitled <a href="http://www.rencontres-arles.com/C.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=ARLAR1_52_VForm&FRM=Frame:ARLAR1_59#/CMS3&VF=ARLAR1_52_VForm&FRM=Frame:ARLAR1_95" title="">Kids at War</a>, it is one of the most intriguing shows at this year's <a href="http://www.rencontres-arles.com/" title="">Rencontres d'Arles photo-festival</a>.</p>
<p>Though not as well-known as his contemporaries, <a href="http://www.atgetphotography.com/" title="">Atget</a> and <a href="http://www.lartigue.org/" title="">Lartigue</a>, Gimpel, as this show illustrates, was one of the most restlessly mischievous presences in <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/photography" title="More from the Guardian on Photography">photography</a>
during the belle epoque. He created various experimental series, such
as his early self-portraits taken in distorting mirrors, and his
so-called "spirit photos", in which he manipulated light to create
haloes and auras around his sitters.</p>
<p>Kids at War, though, is a
true oddity. In 1915, Gimpel befriended a bunch of children who daily
played war games on Rue de Grenata in Paris, recreating – in their
makeshift way – the battles that raged across <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/europe-news" title="More from the Guardian on Europe">Europe</a>.
Every Sunday, Gimpel arrived with his new colour camera and
orchestrated the kids, helping them create their often exotic military
costumes and make wooden rifles, bayonets and even an aeroplane, which
he hung on ropes from a lamppost. Look closely and you can see that its
component parts include a coffee grinder and a broom handle. Above it, a
cut-out of a German plane hovers.</p>
<span class="inline wide">
<img src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/7/10/1404992372089/L-on-Gimpel-Ex-cution-de--009.jpg" alt="Léon Gimpel, Exécution de un Boche, on show at Rencontre Arles 2014. " data-pin-description="Exécution de un Boche. Photograph: Léon Gimpel/collection Société française de photographie, Paris
" height="276" width="460" />
<span class="caption" style="width: 460px;">
Exécution de un Boche. Photograph: Léon Gimpel/collection Société française de photographie, Paris
</span>
</span>
<p>Gimpel's small autochromes of these staged tableaux are both innocent
and knowing, and, here and there, disturbing in their mirroring of
reality. In one image, ominously titled Execution of a Boche, he stages a
strange firing squad in which one boy stands blindfold before the mouth
of a large cannon made from a piece of metal pipe. Another child, in a
naval uniform, holds a pretend rifle pointed at the victim's heart.</p>
<p>Elsewhere,
the images are more playful. An angelic-looking boy is decorated by a
stern-looking officer, while a ragtag bunch of children, including a
nurse and two bandsmen, stand to attention. In the left foreground, a
tiny child with a pot belly <a href="http://www.google.fr/imgres?imgurl=http://conniedickson.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/LEON-GIMPEL663.jpg&imgrefurl=http://conniedickson.co.uk/blog/?p%3D861&h=472&w=638&tbnid=wXaXMJrk1aAYAM:&zoom=1&tbnh=70&tbnw=95&usg=__aqF0vY2vqEe9a5gEKB_C0XKojoc=&docid=ZTPAO4Jg3O76hM&client=firefox-beta&sa=X&ei=AmC-U9X1E8TL0QX9iYGwCg&ved=0CI8BEP4dMAw" title="">stares defiantly at the camera</a>.</p>
<p>This
is a boy called Pepete, whom Gimpel described as "small, slightly
misshaped, rather scrofulous, looking like a gnome". What is interesting
here is how much the children enjoy becoming a part of his elaborately
staged shots. In another black-and-white photograph, The Charge, they
stride towards the camera, guns and swords at the ready, while a crowd
of bemused adults look on, smiling.</p>
<p>That Gimpel's Jewish family
fled Alsace during the German advance lends the images another layer of
meaning. The images are unreal, not only in their staging, but in their
evocation of heroism and glory. Save for the firing-squad tableau, the
enemy are seldom seen and death remains an abstraction. In the
semi-darkness of a room in the Église des Frères Prêcheurs, the images
exert a strange fascination. They seem, in their smallness, and in the
world they evoke, to be strange fictions from the pioneering days of
image-making. Every Sunday, at the end of the day's action, Gimpel
handed out sweets to his battle-weary troops. They gathered around him,
shouting "Vive le Photographe!"</p>
<p>• Until 31 August. Église des Frères Prêcheurs, Quai Marx Dormoy, 13200 Arles, France. <a href="http://www.rencontres-arles.com/C.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=ARLAR1_95" title="">Event website.</a></p>
<p><a itemprop="https://sfp.asso.fr/blog-collection/?post/2014/07/18/publisher" href="http://www.theguardian.com/">theguardian.com</a></p>
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