Crimes de la Commune is a series of photomontages produced by French photographer Ernest-Charles Appert at the end of the Paris Commune. A Parisian photographer accredited to the Tribunal de la Seine, and sometimes cited as the forerunner of bertillonage, he photographed Communards incarcerated in Versailles and used these portraits in photomontages. This practice of committed photomontage is the subject of much debate. Furthermore, these photographs raise issues of both commercial practice and copyright.
Ernest-Charles and Eugène-Léon Appert Eugène-Léon Appert (born March 30, 1830, in Châteauroux, died March 4, 1905, in Médan) and Ernest-Charles Appert (born September 10, 1831 in Châteauroux, died January 15, 1890, in Paris) were the natural sons of domestic servant Anne Appert. They left Châteauroux at an undetermined date to work in photography in Paris. The two brothers shared the same initial and merged under the same business identity, that of Eugène Ernest Appert. They apprenticed in the studio of Émile Defonds, a founding member of the Société française de photographie, with Alphonse Bousseton, a former miniature painter. Eugène Appert was listed in the Commerce and Industry directory in 1854. Initially an apprentice, he became Bousseton's partner in 1862. In 1868, in the midst of the economic crisis, he set up his own workshop at 24 rue Taitbout, in what was then the photographers' studio district.
The Appert brothers specialized in portrait photography of political figures, and Ernest-Charles was an early practitioner of photomontage (Blois trial in July 1870,The photograph is entitled The High Court of Justice sitting in Blois in 1870 for the plot against the life of Napoleon III. dealing with various plots against the life of Napoleon III, involving Gustave Flourens and Eugène Protot). They took part in the Universal Exhibitions of 1862 and 1867.
According to Stéphanie Sotteau Soualle,In 2010, Stéphanie Sotteau Soualle defended her doctoral thesis entitled "Appert, photographe parisien: atelier et actualité (1860-1890)." a systematic inventory of Appert's images confirms that Ernest-Charles was the author of the series of photomontages, the Crimes de la Commune.
Appert and the Paris Commune
During the siege of Paris in the 1870 war, Appert photographed French and Prussian officers in the forts around Paris. One or other of the brothers worked for the Ministry of Justice as an expert for the Tribunal de la Seine, as a court photographer,Appert introduced himself successively as "Photographer to the Judiciary" in 1868, then as "Expert to the Seine Court" after September 1870, and finally as "Eugène Appert Photographie Expert". and was thus able to take many photographs of prisoners. During the Paris Commune, he seems to have sided with the "Versaillais" against the "Communards". On behalf of Thiers and his regime, he took a large number of photos of Versailles repression, both in the field and in Versailles prisons.
In early 1872, Appert published the album Crimes de la Commune.
It has often been claimed that Appert was a Versaillais, or even a Bonapartist, because after the fall of Napoleon III, Appert published numerous propaganda photomontages depicting the major events of the Bonapartist clan. He was even condemned in 1874 for celebrating the prince's majority.
He also shot a photomontage the execution of Louis Rossel, Pierre Bourgeois and Théophile Ferré at the Satory camp by the Versailles army.
However, while the photomontages in Crimes de la Commune justified Adolphe Thiers's repressive policies, the photomontages of the imperial prince served as Bonapartist propaganda, and Appert later celebrated the Republicans' electoral successes.
For Jean-Claude Gautrand, Appert was "the most Versaillais of photographers", but for Stéphanie Sotteau Soualle, this photographer, who had links with the army, the papacy – he produced a series of portraits of Pope Leo XIII, elected in 1878 – the political class and the press,He published his portraits uninterruptedly, over some thirty years, in both Le Monde illustré and l'Illustration. seems above all "a commercial photographer who managed to survive the Second Empire, the Franco-Prussian War, the National Defense government, the Civil War and the ups and downs of the Third Republic, while keeping his studio in business. [...] Before being a 'Versailles', Bonapartist or Republican partisan, he is above all an opportunistic professional who has created a network of relationships and reacts effectively to events", and who demonstrates a "spirit of adaptation to political circumstances".
Appert in the origins of forensic identification
Portraits of imprisoned communards
Appert enjoyed a privileged relationship with the Prefecture of Police. Appointed by the judicial authorities to photograph the Rue Haxo, the scene of a confused hostage execution during the Bloody Week, he also obtained permission to photograph inmates of the Versailles prisons, notably Louise Michel and Charles Lullier. His portraits are, according to Jeannene Przyblyski, "poignant images", showing inmates oscillating between defiance and the quest for respectability. notes that "some pose with a somewhat resigned pride, no doubt as a final challenge".
As early as the 19th century,In July 1871, for example, Le Charivari reported that "photography is of great service to the police: collodion is responsible for all the arrests being made at the moment ". it was often said that "the Versailles authorities also used photography to control and identify Communards", and Gisèle Freund even went so far as to say that, while Communards willingly allowed themselves to be photographed in front of the barricades, "those who were recognized from these images by Thiers' police officers were almost all shot. It was the first time in history that photography was used as a police informer". Since the Second Empire, photography has legitimized itself as an auxiliary of public order.
In fact, the "Missel des communards" marks a turning point in the police use of photography. According to Pierre Piazza, it was the Prefecture of Police who commissioned Appert to take portraits of Communards incarcerated in Versailles. For Éric Heilmann, "the first systematic file-keeping operation was carried out in 1871 by the military justice system, in an attempt to identify Commune militants." The practice gradually spread: portraits, often of mediocre quality, were gradually added to convict files and intelligence cards. According to Christine Lapostolle, in reference to Alphonse Bertillon, this was "bertillonnage avant la lettre".
For Christian Phéline, Appert's portraits of Communards were a forerunner of Alphonse Bertillon's forensic photography. By organizing a vast photo campaign in the prisons of Versailles, he was responding to a government order to identify "communards" and enable them to be hunted down. Appert inaugurated "a mode of figuration defined by its own functionality: the inmates are identically represented seated, in front of the light background of a wall ". Generally speaking, the history of photography assumes that Appert perfected this "judicial" genre by photographing the inmates of Versailles prisons in 1871. In 1874, in a "climate of social reaction" after the crushing of the insurrection, a photographic service was created at the Paris police headquarters.
First photomontages Appert then exploited the prisoners' portraits commercially in his photomontages, in which he featured the protagonists. Women photographed individually in the courtyard of the Chantiers prison are featured in the photomontage Des femmes de la Commune. For Christine Lapostolle, it's difficult to know whether Appert was inventing or adopting a practice already in use under Napoleon III, or even in other countries, a practice that until then had been applied only to artistic photography.
For Emmanuèle Peyret, "Eugène Appert used the busts and heads from the photos during their incarceration, then cut, pasted and re-pasted them. Well treated, despite their vices (one of them drinks from the bottle, whereas in the original photo she's holding a cigar), their insolence and vulgarity (hand on hip, provocative attitude). The result of the trickery is, dare we say it, truer than life, although a few details betray the deception: in the front row, the same dress twice, in the background, the same shot of soldiers twice, and one of the women has kept her military cap. Very well executed propaganda to continue damaging the image of these courageous women."
Appert had already adopted this portrait style in 1869: the portrait of Garnier-Pagès, registered for legal deposit on July 27, 1869, was used after the Commune, in 1881, in the photomontage depicting the deputies of the Seine. The photomontage technique stems from the Anglo-Saxon tradition: Appert combined fragments of portraits with actors' bodies, posing them in natural settings. The drawing is only visible in the form of retouching to bind the whole together. In this way, he artificially brought together members of parliament, ministers or the protagonists of a court case, such as the Troppmann case in 1869 or the Victor Noir case in 1870. This practice places him in the dual tradition of the fictitious group portrait in engraving on the one hand, and history painting on the other. It enabled him to free himself from the rules of studio portraiture, which had their origins in the Second Empire and were theorized by Disdéri in his treatise on the Art of Photography.
Crimes de la Commune The Crimes de la Commune series, whose albumen prints.In July 1871, for example, Le Charivari reported that "photography is of great service to the police: collodion is responsible for all the arrests being made at the moment." are kept at the Musée Carnavalet, features seven photomontages and one photograph According to André Rouillé and Bernard Marbot, the collective title "Crimes de la Commune" applies to six photomontages "at least" out of a total production of some thirty photomontages,33 while in 2012 Mia Fineman lists nine photomontages in the series. – that of the Arcueil Dominicans who escaped the massacre – created over the course of a year, starting on July 29, 1871. Three later photomontages show the punishment of the insurgents, from internment – "Prison des Chantiers, Versailles" – to the epilogue of November 28, 1871 – "Execution of Rossel, Bourgeois," "Ferré on the plain of Satory – via the judgment" and "Third Council of War of Versailles."
The photomontages, sold in three different formats, from large plates to cartes de visite, met with some success until they were banned in autumn 1872.
Sources and inspiration