Masters of the Image
The people seen strolling around the city or otherwise highly visible in public were also the masters of the image. Agency photographs produced by the combination of German censorship and the official photographic agency (created in late 1941 to oversee the production and distribution of press photographs and the publishing industry) were often esthetic and carefully composed, but they were uniformly sterile and servile. Most of these images tended to focus on the picturesque or the unexpected, with the purpose of triggering a smile or of subliminally persuading, but, other than the images used to denounce Allied bombings, the official photographic record of the time is mute - or even deliberately misleading - about suffering in the city. The photographs created by the Vichy propaganda services were studiously but blatantly staged to suggest an atmosphere of mystique, much like religious images.
There were few amateur photographers at the time, and the exact status of many of those who did leave a photographic record is not known. They were rare in part because of the difficulty of acquiring and developing photographic film. The amateur images included in this exhibit offer a counter-point to propaganda or at the very least, a contrasting view to the carefully airbrushed official record. They recreate a less peaceful atmosphere than staged official images, sometimes portraying events in a way that yielded highly original documents. Still, the few Resistance fighters who provided glimpses of the Resistance remained in the shadows, which were their only protection, leaving behind photographic evidence only of the aftermath of Resistance fighters' actions or other ephemeral signs that only hint at their activities: The Photograph ends where fighting and clandestine activities began. Which means that, from a contemporary spectator's perspective, the skewed, partial visual remains of the period always run the risk of offering an imbalanced view of the prevailing atmosphere.
Contemporary viewers of the images presented here are therefore forewarned that that these images are often difficult to interpret, and sometimes highly misleading. In fact, viewers are advised to interpret some of these images as signifying the opposite of what they appear to portray!
