an exhibition dedicated to women war photographers in Paris

It is with the photos of Gerda Taro, the companion of the famous photographer Robert Capa that opens the exhibition “Women photographers of war”, inaugurated on mTuesday, March 8 at the Museum of the Liberation in Paris. The young woman was killed at the age of 27, in Spain in 1937, while covering the Civil War. “The women had their share, insists Sylvie Zaidman, the general curator of the exhibition. They played their part in this great history of war photography. You can’t imagine that, from the 1930s, women were there, alongside men, to cover all these conflicts.“

In 1944, it was the American Lee Miller who covered the end of the Second World War for the magazine vogue : it captures in images the Liberation and the discovery of the Nazi camps. In Dachau, she thus photographed two American soldiers facing the corpses of prisoners.

“It’s a railway car and inside there are dead people. They were prisoners describes Antony Penrose, the son of Lee Miller, who disappeared in July 1977. Each person had a life, with a life perhaps. Now they are like trash. This is characteristic of work during the war: she wants to show her compassion for humanity.“, he specifies.

French photographer Christine Spengler, who covered 14 conflicts from the 1970s, refutes the idea of ​​a female gaze on war. But being a woman allowed her to take pictures impossible for men, especially in Iran and Afghanistan.

Today, as the war rages in Ukraine, she notes with sadness that her photos presented in the exhibition are terribly topical, and in particular that of the bombing of Phnom Penh in 1975. “The day before yesterday, I almost cried talking about this photo of Phnom Penh because it is Kiev today. We are only told of bombardments, so of gutted houses, the smell of death…, regret Christine Spengler. And also, when I think that they chose, here, in this exhibition, the photo of the Polisario Front, of this female fighter, of her old wooden gun and her baby looking at me. Well, it’s also relevant because the Ukrainians also said that their women, too, were going to fight.“, she points out.

The exhibition also reminds us of the price to pay for bearing witness. Of the eight female war photographers whose work is featured, two died in combat.

The exhibition “Women Photographers of War” is on view at the Liberation Museum – General Leclerc Museum – Jean Moulin Museum, in Paris, until December 31.