Pierre Jahan & Jean Cocteau - La Mort et les Statues, Editions du Compas, 1946, Paris
Softcover in french wrappers, edition of 450 numbered copies, facsimile manuscript page by Cocteau laid in.
"The statues photographed by Jahan had been ripped from their plinths or torn from buildings by the occupying Nazis and taken to this Parisian warehouse to be broken up and then melted down for their metal - a Saragossa Sea of disembodied heads, disarticulated limbs and limbless torsos. Jahan was photographing this statue graveyard at a time when other photographers were photographing human graveyards - at Belsen, Dachau, Buchenwald and Treblinka. And yet his evocative, poignant photographs - without negating the value of witnessing and documenting human suffering - articulate something particularly apt about the recent events they symbolize. These simple pictures of junked statues speak strongly about loss, about barbarism, about the trashing of culture, and other issues of great importance, proving that poetry is sometimes as necessary to understanding as factual documentation." (Parr/Badger - The Photobook, A History volume I)
Pages: 40
Place: Paris
Year: 1946
Publisher: Editions du Compas
Size: 26 x 34 cm (approx.)
Softcover in french wrappers, edition of 450 numbered copies, facsimile manuscript page by Cocteau laid in.
"The statues photographed by Jahan had been ripped from their plinths or torn from buildings by the occupying Nazis and taken to this Parisian warehouse to be broken up and then melted down for their metal - a Saragossa Sea of disembodied heads, disarticulated limbs and limbless torsos. Jahan was photographing this statue graveyard at a time when other photographers were photographing human graveyards - at Belsen, Dachau, Buchenwald and Treblinka. And yet his evocative, poignant photographs - without negating the value of witnessing and documenting human suffering - articulate something particularly apt about the recent events they symbolize. These simple pictures of junked statues speak strongly about loss, about barbarism, about the trashing of culture, and other issues of great importance, proving that poetry is sometimes as necessary to understanding as factual documentation." (Parr/Badger - The Photobook, A History volume I)
Pages: 40
Place: Paris
Year: 1946
Publisher: Editions du Compas
Size: 26 x 34 cm (approx.)
