La Nouvelle photographie is not yet another manifesto, but the festival dedicated to images by the cultural center of Port-la-Nouvelle, a charming resort on the mediterranean coast in the south of France. Co-opted by Sylvie Romieu and Claudio Isgro, the 2025 edition will not present a collective event but a thematic and historical exhibition by Jacques Sierpinski. Encounter.
Jean-Jacques Ader: Were you keen on history or Napoleon at the beginning of this project?
Jacques Sierpinski: Not at all. I have been interested in geopolitics and the memory of historical places for a long time. It so happens that one day, going to Paris, I arrived at the Gare d’Austerlitz; my first meeting was on Avenue de Wagram, the next on Rue de Rivoli, and I realized that all these names, which come from the sites of Napoleonic battles, were familiar to us but remained unknown to the general public. All these places intrigued me and I decided to go and see what they might look like.
I suppose there were some that were not easy to find?
JS: Yes of course, Wagram for example – in Austria near Vienna – whose real name is Deutsch-Wagram. A person I asked for directions told me that the exact location of the battle was in Markgraf-Neusiede, ten kilometers from Wagram. However, at the time, when the marshals met Napoleon to sign the victory, he found this name too complicated to remember, and chose that of the nearest village.
The meetings, therefore, must have been interesting too
JS: Yes, that’s true. For example, there are many people reconstructing the myth of Napoleon, they dress as period soldiers and they do life-size reconstructions. The famous battle of La Berezina is reconstructed every year. In Austerlitz I found one of these reenactors who traveled around the world in a draisine dressed as a Napoleonic grognard! Another meeting was with a woman in Markgraf-Neusiede, an elected official of the town. She worked on the battles and offered to show me something inaccessible to the public, going down a long tunnel in the village church, we came across a vaulted cellar without light, filled with human skulls; faced with the disaster, Napoleon had all the bodies collected, both of their own and those of the enemies, had this crypt dug, to gather and honor the dead.
When you were traveling to get to one of the sites, what did you hope to find?
JS: Nothing (smiles). Napoleon is ancient there are no more traces. I knew that there was a large monument at Austerlitz, but that wasn’t what interested me. There are many monuments in foreign countries that celebrate Napoleon, but very few in France.
Out of this large number of battles, were there mainly victories?
JS: Many more victories for Napoleon, yes; that’s why he was sent to Saint Helena, because he was very popular and represented a danger in the eyes of some.
Were all these places intended to be battlefields?
JS: Yes. At the time, war was very codified, much more than now, or, let’s say that certain rules were more or less respected. The variable are the civilians, whereas before the armies fought among themselves. The places of confrontation were chosen far from the populations and villages, rather in the plains, by the belligerents.
How did you determine precisely the settings to photograph?
JS: It is the site of the battle; it is a perimeter, a landscape.
And what is there to see in these images?
JS: Nothing. It’s very banal. You have to compare them to the names, I think. But that’s perhaps the essence of photography, it’s choosing a frame that didn’t necessarily evoke the battle for me, but that gave me the feeling of resonating with the name of the battle. It was more or less easy, depending on the place, and I was sometimes attracted by an offbeat and ironic look, a little grating in relation to history. All these places of death have been dispossessed of this memory. I also care about the didactic side of the genre, it’s interesting that people manage to resituate these places in a historical and mapped context, all of this is part of the history of Europe after all.
Bernard Plossu wrote a text for you, Did you ask for it?
JS: Absolutely. Bernard was one of the first to see this work, about ten years ago. It was at the Nuits photographiques de Pierrevert; he showed a lot of interest and it was natural that I suggested that he write a few lines about it.
How many war sites will be shown in the exhibition?
JS: There will be about forty prints representing about ten battles. A giant map will be hung for the occasion, with all the specific locations so that visitors can have geographical references. Under each image is specified the location of the conflict, its date and the number of victims.
Text and interview by Jean-Jacques Ader
“Batailles” exhibition by Jacques Sierpinski at the Roger Broncy space in Port-la-Nouvelle (11) from March 7 to April 26, 2025, free entry.
Info: https://portlanouvelle.fr/festival-la-nouvelle-photographie/
