Programme of national events marking the centenary of the First World War

Exhibition

Éric Poitevin is one of France's most important contemporary photographers. Interested in both landscape and the human form, Éric has photographed nearly all the veterans of the First World War. In 1985, at the age of 24, he set out on a tour of France to take studio photographs of these people who 'for the most part have decided to say nothing, because when violence reaches such a level, it's like you have returned from outer space or I don't know where.' The result is a series of one hundred portraits of a great sobriety, one hundred faces sharing the same format and the same composition, wherein the dignity of each poilu is shown on a simple black background.