Patrick Tourneboeuf is presenting eight photographs of memorials from his series Stèles for an exhibition that coincides with the centenary of World War I.
A personal story led Patrick Tourneboeuf to turn his attention to French monuments erected in memory of les poilus, the term civilians used to refer to soldiers. In late July 1914, as troops from across the country mobilized, Abel Paul Tourneboeuf left his family farm in Sarthe. On the third day of the war, August 3, 1914, he was killed in battle. Many years later, one July 14, when he was barely ten years old, Abel’s great-grandson, Patrick, found himself on the family land. Although not yet a photographer, he was already a keen observer, and he noticed that his great-grandfather’s name wasn’t mentioned on the list of soldiers who had died, “for France.” The Public Records office had made a mistake: Abel’s name appeared on the monument in a neighboring village. Patrick realized that while memorials are seen, they are not looked at, and their message is no longer visible.
Since 2003, in an act that has more to do with duty to national heritage than art, Tourneboeuf has attempted to return these memorial sites to their original glory. He shoots with a view camera, one photograph per day, near dusk, which requires long exposures, always at the same distance from the object. The visual aspect is accentuated by controlled lighting, the surrounding environment always visible. All of this is done to highlight the diversity of these structures and draw our attention to their historical meaning. There are 36,000 communes in France and just as many monuments to these fallen heroes.
Most of the monuments were erected between 1919 and 1925, when widows, orphans and wounded veterans were wandering aimlessly. They saw the construction of the monuments, with their unbearable lists of the dead, as a kind of expiation of past carnage. Each monument revealed the political, religious and social sensibilities of the city where it was built. They varied according to the commune’s size and wealth, which is why some are more elaborate than others. The monuments could be purchased from a catalogue, or sometimes major artists like Paul Landovski or students of Rodin were called in.
Patrick Tourneboeuf has taken 60 photographs of monuments as part of this ongoing project. Exhibitions are planned, a book is being considered.
Following the series Mur de Berlin and Bunkers, his photographs of monuments makes sense in his body of photographic work, which is at once documentary, historical, visual and related to national heritage.
EXHIBITION
Fusillés pour l’exemple. Les Fantômes de la République.
January 15 to March 7, 2014
Hôtel de Ville de Paris
Place de l’Hôtel de ville
75004 Paris
France
Free admission
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