On the one hand, I have a natural aversion to recommending virtual reality tours for travelers. After all, we travel to be someplace, not virtually but actually. On the other hand, virtual reality tours, in addition to being entertaining, can be informative and insightful when there’s a historical or otherwise important unseen component to complement and enhance a visit to the real deal.

Virtual historical reality tours will become increasingly immersive, seamless and sensorial in the years ahead. As they stand, aside from their entertainment value, do they help travelers on site understand and further appreciate what they’ve come to see?

Curious about the added value of the virtual historical reality tours now available within actual sight of three major monuments in Paris, Notre-Dame Cathedral, the Eiffel Tower, and the Louvre I took a test run of their respective magic goggles on site. For Notre-Dame that meant in a subterranean zone one hundred yards in front of the cathedral. For the Eiffel Tower that meant during a stroll along the Champs de Mars, the park that leads to the tower on Paris’s Right Bank. For the Louvre that meant a walk from one end of its courtyard to the other.

All three proved to be both informative, entertaining and recommendable as complements to actual visits inside of these important monuments.

Eternal Notre-Dame: Amaclio Productions’ virtual reality tour of Notre-Dame Cathedral

Notre-Dame is currently inaccessible to the general public, as it has been since the fire of 2019 destroyed its roof and steeple. The cathedral is scheduled to reopen in December 2024, though under what conditions is not yet known. The virtual reality tour, reached from an underground entrance at the far end of the square in front of the cathedral, is currently programmed to end on September 30, 2025.

Following along with a handsome, well-spoken electronic guide (choose your language), the virtual reality tour of Notre-Dame leads visitors to the doors of the cathedral then inside, through various steps of the building’s medieval construction, 19th-century restoration, and current rehabilitation. It’s an extensive tour. In 45 minutes, while walking and turning in all directions, visitors get a close-up view of the structure inside and out, from various heights, while encountering works and learning about its elements in stone, glass and wood. Visitors “ride” a platform to the upper reaches of the cathedral to stand near a rose window and then higher to visit “the forest” of oak rafters and beams that form the wooden framework, those elements that burned during the fire of 2019. Details are also given about medieval Christianity and the structure’s theological underpinnings. All is made understandable to a wide public.

Altogether, this is an excellent tour that’s as visually compelling as it is informative. And complementing the virtual tour, visitors then visit at their own pace an exhibition about the current renovation and reconstruction. Objects and models along with explanatory panels and interviews in French and in English provide visitors with a clearer understanding of elements touched on during the virtual tour: recreating the wooden framework of the forest, restoring stained glass, the grand organ and the bells, replacing stone vaulting and sculptural elements, and conducting research.

The combination of the virtual reality tour and the exhibition afterwards make for an exceptional and entertaining introduction to the cathedral for those with little prior understanding of the construction and current restoration of the cathedral and is equally fascinating for those already acquainted with Our Lady of Paris. The virtual tour last 45-minutes, to which you need to add departure time and time to visit the post-tour exhibition, so count 70-90 minutes altogether.

I recommend getting a good look at the façade of Notre-Dame and a side view as well before taking the virtual reality tour. Then, after the virtual tour and exhibition, now armed with a deeper appreciation and understanding of the architectural and artistic glory of the cathedral, reconsider the actual façade, take a walk around the full perimeter of the building, and, of course, enter to admire the Notre-Dame’s dazzling restoration and luminous interior.

Practical considerations

There’s a cost to virtual reality tours that may be prohibitive to some. The experience at Eternal Notre-Dame costs 30€99 for adults and 20€99 for children under 17, though on certain days and times adults pay the children price, particularly off season.

Groups of up to six people set off together at the same time, with individual headsets speaking in your chosen language. Each person wears a headset and carries a backpack containing what is essentially a laptop computer while walking along the underground maze. Precise instructions and indications keep you moving and prevent you from bumping into other visitors. The glasses/headset adjust well and the tour is captivating enough that it’s easy to forget the equipment and enjoy the walk. However, the backpack is bit cumbersome, and for anyone with a bad back, carrying it for 45 minutes may be uncomfortable.

Brief pauses between scenes within the virtual universe can be momentarily confusing, but the lit path and your virtual guide will return soon enough to point you in the right direction as you walk.

The minimum recommended age is 11, though children as young as 8 may be admitted. However, given the weight of the backpack and the need to precisely follow lit directional indications so as to avoid bumping into walls and, especially, other visitors, this virtual reality tour may not be appropriate for a small and fidgety preteen. Or you can hold your child’s hand as guidance.

For further information and reservations see Eternal Notre-Dame.

Eternal Notre-Dame was produced by Amaclio Productions, a company that has developed other virtual reality and sound and light shows in France, including at the Invalides in Paris, the Cité de l’Histore at La Défense (Eternal Notre-Dame is also available at that site), Mont Saint Michel, and the Carrousel of Saumur.

Viality Tour’s virtual reality and actual walking tour near the Eiffel Tower and in the courtyard of the Louvre

While Viality Tour’s virtual reality tours of the Eiffel Tower and the courtyards of the Louvre don’t have the same high production value as Amaclio’s well-financed Notre-Dame tour, what makes it worthwhile is that these tour has its iconic monuments in plain view and is given by actual human guides, and delightful ones at that. The tour was developed by the young start-up team of Vladina Flaquière and Michel Dang. One or the other may be your guide.

The Eiffel Tower: The goggle-wearing virtual portion of the tour takes users through the construction of the Eiffel Tower from 1887 to 1889 and into the Universal Exposition of 1889 for which it was built. Much of the exposition sprawled along the Champs de Mars, the very park where you’ll be walking. The Champs de Mars formerly served as the parade grounds for the nearby Military Academy (Ecole Militaire).

Vladina or Michel or an assistant rather than an avatar is your actual guide. Speaking French or English depending on the scheduled or private group, your guide explains what you see in the goggles as you stand and turn in 360 degrees. You do not walk while wearing the goggles. Instead, between virtual scenes, you then remove the goggles and approach closer and closer to the actual tower. During that time, the tour continues with the actual Eiffel Tower in view as your guide provides further details about what you see today and answers any questions you may have. So this is both a virtual and an actual tour, lasting about 75 minutes, accompanied by your affable guide and with numerous photo ops along the way.

Vladina has worked as a licensed guide at various chateaux in Brittany, the Loire Valley and Versailles, before teaming with Michel to develop Viality Tour. She continues to guide at Versailles. Michel, the equally affable tech half of the team, holds a masters in marketing and worked as a junior product marketing manager with Netgear before he and Vladina partnered to create Viality Tour. Michel does the computer modeling with the assistance of a graphic designer as well as the team’s communications work.

With or without actually going up in the tower, this is an excellent introduction to it. If unwilling to deal with the tickets, lines and crowded elevators, the Viality Tour—both its virtual and actual realities—can serve as your informative visit in and of itself.

If interested in the Viality Tour and also planning to go up the tower, try to sync the two by scheduling the Viality Tour so that it ends 15-30 minutes before the timed ticket you’ve purchased (well) in advance to go up. That will allow for a nice segue from one to the other while allowing you time to go through the security line at the tower. (Viality Tour will not purchase your Eiffel Tower ticket.)

The courtyards of the Louvre: As much as I appreciated Viality’s Eiffel Tower tour, I found their Louvre tour even more interesting and informative. Visitors to the museum are typically unaware of the Louvre’s evolution over the past 800 years from fortress to castle to palace to museum, and even less aware that it was once connected to another palace, the Tuileries Palace. On an outdoor walk with several virtual reality stops from the far eastern end of the Louvre to nearly its far western end, this tour guides visitors through various eras of the construction of the Louvre and the Tuileries, up until 1871, when the latter was set ablaze by the Paris Commune. You’ll near forget the hundreds of people queuing up for the museum and milling about… until the end when you join them.

You don’t have to join them just yet, however, since the Viality Louvre tour make for a nice complement to the audio-guide that I’ve created to the Tuileries Garden for the VoiceMap app, The Tuileries Garden: The Royal Walk from the Louvre to the Champs-Elysées. The Viality Tour ends about where mine starts, with minimal overlap.

The Eiffel Tower tour lasts about 75 minutes. The Louvre tour last 10-15 minutes longer. Each costs 29€ for adults and 19€ for children 8 to 17. Children under 8 are not accepted. Groups can consist of up to 10 people.

For further information and for the tour schedule see the Viality Tour website. Though the indicated language of the tour may be French, it may also be conducted in English, so inquire about that possibility when reserving. With sufficient advance planning, privatization for your own group may be possible upon request.

Vladina and Michel plan to extend the Viality Tour concept to other major monuments of the city over the coming years.

© 2024, 2025 Gary Lee Kraut

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Relatively well known in France but little beyond its borders, the history of the home for Jewish child refugees that operated in the pre-Alpine village of Izieu from May 1943 to April 1944 provides a remarkable glimpse of migration, childhood and caregiving under perilous conditions. It’s a story—history—that can resonate well beyond France, beyond an interest in the period of the Second World War, and beyond one religious group. It is a story of humanity and inhumanity for the ages.

However worthwhile the trek, one would have to travel well off the beaten track to visit the memorial and museum that now occupies the former children’s home in Izieu, located in an isolated hillside village 45 miles east of Lyon off the route to Chambery. But now, and until July 23, 2023, an exceptional and unexpectedly uplifting exhibition at the Museum of Jewish Art and History (MahJ) allows Parisians and visitors to Paris to examine the children’s drawings and words—with a paper “filmstrip” as pièce des résistance—and to learn of the remarkable efforts of their caregivers to allow them to flourish under perilous circumstances.

The former children’s home is now officially called Maison d’Izieu, Memorial to Exterminated Jewish Children, a name that speaks of the horror that came to 44 of the children who lived there and their caretakers. Yet the title of the exhibition at the Mahj—“You Will Always Remember Me,” Words and Drawings of the Children if Izieu—speaks above all of the creativity, comradery and well-being of the children who lived there and of the devoted and caring staff that enabled it.

Though far removed from Frank family’s Secret Annex in Amsterdam, there is, says Dominique Vidaud, director of the Maison d’Izieu, a parallel to be seen between the children’s collective body of work and the Diary of Anne Frank. As with Anne Frank’s writings, the drawings, stories and letters of the children of Izieu, supplemented here by archival documents and photographs, provide an intimate and universally understandable vision of their creators in their time and place and hopes for the future.

This is not a singularly French history. In fact, what makes their story and the exhibition particularly notable is how the children of Izieu and their caregivers, as well as authorities and villagers who sought to help or harm them, reflect a much wider view of European history and of childhood and childcare itself.

The arc holding together the three rooms of the exhibition is the memory of the remarkable caregiver and caretaker Sabine Zlatin, a woman trained as an artist who devoted herself to ensuring, during wartime and under constant threat, a form of normalcy for child refugees by creating an environment worthy of a healthy, active, developmental, educational and imaginative childhood, a survivor who went on to testify to condemn one of the prime hands of their extermination, and who spearheaded the drive to preserve their memory.

The historical context

The first of the three rooms of the exhibition presents the historical context for the existence and demise of the children’s home in Izieu. A map occupying one wall (shown below) is especially informative for visitors who are unclear of the geography of Jewish pre-war migration and wartime displacements or of the administrative borders of France during the German occupation and the location of major internment camps and of Izieu itself.

Sabine and Miron Zlatin were part of a wave of thousands of eastern European Jews of the 1920s and 1930s. Born in Russia and having lived in Poland as a teenager, Miron Zlatin (1904-1944) emigrated to France in 1924. Sabine Chwatz (1907-1996) immigrated from Poland as a young woman and reached France in 1926. They met in Nancy, in eastern France, where she was studying art and literature and he agricultural science, and married in 1927. The couple bought a poultry farm, and a decade later Miron gained national recognition in the field. Thanks to that recognition, they were both able to obtain French citizenship in 1939, shortly before the outbreak of the war. The couple had no children.

Emigrant Jews who had not obtained French nationality by the fall of 1940 or whose French nationality would be revoked were among the first in the German-occupied zone of northern France to be interned and later among the first to be deported. Yet the institution of anti-Jewish laws of 1940 and 1941 and the implementation by German occupiers and French officials of the Final Solution, the Nazi plan to eliminate Jews in territories they occupied, would eventually put Jews throughout the country in peril.

Sabine, by then naturalized French, trained and worked as a nurse with the Red Cross in the unoccupied, so-called “free” zone until hardening anti-Jewish laws caused her dismissal in February 1941. She then joined the Oeuvre de secours aux enfants (OSE), a welfare agency for Jewish children that was already active in France in the late 1930s, as a social aid to help families interned in camps in southern France and to help with the transfer of orphaned children and children otherwise separated from their family to group homes. The children in her care reflected the pan-European, as well as pan-Mediterranean, movement of Jews in the late 1930s and during the war. Most of them were born in France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Austria of parents who had previously immigrated from eastern Europe, and there were some German-born and Algerian-born children as well.

The first convoys of Jews from France destined for the Nazi death camps left for Auschwitz-Birkenau in March 1942. By July, French authorities were actively delivering Jew to the Nazis for deportation, not only adults as Germany originally requested but children under 16 as well. Whereas Jews in the unoccupied zone, though subject to anti-Jewish laws, had been largely out of reach of Nazi occupying forces, French authorities launched round-ups in the south as well beginning in August 1942. And in November that year, after American and British forces landed in North Africa, German troops took control of the formerly unoccupied zone as well, making the situation for the Jewish refugees under the Zlatins’ care more perilous. No longer safe from possible internment or deportation, those operating homes for Jewish children needed to find more secure locations. The solution for the Zlatins and others was to move to safety in the departments in the furthest edges of southeastern France, which were occupied not by Germany but by Italy.

The home for child refugees in Izieu

In search of a safe environment for the children, the Zaltins obtained permission from supportive French authorities (yes, there were some) in the departments of Hérault (southwest France), where they’d been living, and in Ain (southeast), where they sought to move, to occupy a large house in Izieu, within the Italian-controlled zone. Though Mussolini’s Italy had numerous parallel aims with Hitler’s Germany as a founding fellow member of the Axis powers, the Italians had little interest in applying the Nazi policies of exterminating Jews.

In May 1943 the Zlatins and a group of children left Lodève, in Hérault, to settle in Izieu. Though located in an isolated village where it would not call attention to itself, the “Colony for child refugees from Hérault,” as it was called, was neither hidden nor clandestine in Izieu. Neighbors and local authorities were well aware that it housed Jewish children and was operated by Jewish caregivers and teachers. Some villagers openly provided material assistance, and their children later told of playing with the children from the home.

The home in Izieu provided refuge for 105 children for various lengths of time during its 11 months of activity. Despite the material hardships (limited ration cards, cold in winter, lack of running water other than from a fountain outside) and while faced with the children’s the psychological and emotional trauma of having their parents taken from them, the Zlatins and staff sought to create an environment that would be as wholesome, creative and normal as possible for the children ages 3 to 16. Days were organized around schooling, domestic chores, outings into the immediate natural surroundings, preparing and eating meals, arts, craft and theater, individual (rather than collective) bedtime stories, sleep.

Instead of showing misery, the drawings, writings and photos presented in the second room of the exhibition reveal children being children: playful, imaginative, creative, laughing, mocking, singing, with an endless appetite for paper for their projects. For the children of Izieu, anti-Semitism and the war itself seemed to be kept at bay. Their drawings give no hint of current world events and lurking danger. Instead, we see colorful drawing of Puss and Boots, of American cowboys and Indians, of boys playing games, of a safari, of pleasing landscapes, of medieval tales, of valiant Cossacks. We see a list of classroom assignments for children aged 6 to 12. We see photographs that reveal outings as nature-filled as at any children’s camp, always with an air of solidarity. One senses a secular, French pedagogy.

The Gestapo raid

Yet Sabine Zlatin was aware that the situation was becoming increasingly perilous. Following the Italian surrender to the Allies in September 1943, Germans forces entered the former Italian-occupied zone of southeast France. Word came of Jews being arrested in the region. Faced with impending danger, she left for Montpellier on April 3, 1944 in search of a more secure location for the children. On April 6, the Gestapo raided the home and arrested nearly all those present: 44 children and seven adults, including Miron Zlatin. One child escaped through a window to safe hiding with a neighbor as the raid got underway. The deportation process—first to Drancy, the transit hub north of Paris, then to Auschwitz—then began under orders of Klaus Barbie, the infamous “Butcher of Lyon.” Miron Zlatin and two of the older children were killed by firing squad in Estonia. The others were gassed in Auschwitz, except for one adult who managed to escape.

Of the 60 other children who had passed though the home at various times in the 11 months prior to the raid, all but one appears to have survived the Holocaust, a testimony to the relative success of networks and of individuals protecting them and perhaps to their own fortitude. About 77,000 Jews from France perished in the Holocaust while approximately 75% of the overall Jewish population of France at the start of the war survived. More specifically 88% of French Jews, 58% of non-French Jewish and 85% of Jewish children survived. Among the survivors who had spent time at Izieu was Paul Niedermann, subject of this 2014 interview by Janet Hulstrand for France Revisited. In 1987, Klaus Barbie was sentence to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity. Sabine Zlatin testified at the trial, as did Paul Niedermann.

You will always remember me

I provide this outline of history as background for those who might not be aware of it. However, the focus of the exhibition at the MahJ is not actually on that full sweep of events. While our awareness of the arrestation and murder of the children or staff might darkly cloud our examination of the drawings and photographs, our view of them begins to be cleared by the exhibition’s emphasis on the efforts of the Zlatins and their staff to create an environment where the children under their care could develop under the best conditions possible: nutritionally, educationally, psychologically, creatively and fraternally. And our view is further cleared by the exhibition’s placing front and center the joy seen in the children’s drawings and words. They then appear luminous.

Upon her return to the site of the crime three weeks later, Sabine Zlatin gathered for safekeeping the drawings, letters and notebooks that had been left behind in the silenced house. A first commemorative ceremony was held there on April 7, 1946.

The title of this exhibition comes from a phrase that appears twice in a little notebook (below) that she found in which children wrote to their friend Mina Aronawicz as they were leaving the home while Mina was staying, as one might sign a school yearbook. Born in Brussels in 1932 to Polished parents, Mina was one of the children arrested in the Gestapo raid and killed at Auschwitz. Several months earlier, her friends wrote in her notebook: Tu te souviendras de moi. You will always remember me.

The paper “filmstrips”

The exhibition’s third room presents the creative, collective pièce des résistance of the exhibition: three “filmstrips” made of sheets of paper glued together into long scrolls that bear crayon drawings and scenarios written by the children in 1943. The 2-3-yard scroll are fragments of paper “filmstrips” that were projected on a screen, as with a magic lantern, while the children provided the voices and sound effects to play out the scenarios they’d written.

The most complete of the three bands, Story of Ivan Tsarawitch, was recently made into an animated film. In 2021, the Maison d’Izieu asked Parmi les lucioles films, an animation studio based in Valence, south of Lyon, to work with students of the Emile Cohl Art School in Lyon to give movement to the crayon drawings. Students at the Aimé Césaire Middle School in suburb a Lyon provided the voices and sound effects for the film. Like the children of Izieu, the middle-school students were born to non-French parents and recently arrived in France. A documentary of the making of animated film can be viewed in that third room.

The film is a notable accomplishment in its own right. It also serves as a contemporary echo of the ideas, drawings and voices of the children of Izieu. The project, says Dominique Vidaud, director of the Maison d’Izieu, represents a prolongation of the work of the scroll’s original creators.

Of the other two bands, one lacks some text and the other lacks some drawings. Nevertheless, he says that with proper funding he who would like see them turned into animated films as well.

Sabine Zlatin eventually donated the saved material and other personal documents to the Bibliothèque National de France (BnF), the French National Library. “For the most part,” she said, “[these drawings] remained nearly forty-five years in my home. Carefully guarded, never looked at because too painful a memory.”

In 1988, she spearheaded the creation of the Museum-Memorial of the Children of Izieu, to which she donated other material. In 1994, President François Mitterrand inaugurated the museum-memorial at the former home in Izieu as a national remembrance site. Sabine Zlatin died in 1996. In 2000 the name was changed to Maison d’Izieu, Memorial to Exterminated Jewish Children.

Tu te souviendras de moi / You will always remember me, at the Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme (MahJ), 71 rue du Temple in the Marais district of Paris, 3rd arrondissement, until July 23, 2023. Descriptive panels at the entrance to each of the rooms are in English as well as French. Otherwise, exhibition notices are in French only but the displays themselves (drawings, photographs, documents) and their dates often speak for themselves. The exhibition is organized with the assistance of the BnF and the Maison d’Izieu, with support from the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah and the Fondation Rothschild. See here for opening times.

Maison d’Izieu, Mémorial des enfants juifs exterminés, 70 route de Lambraz, Izieu. See here for opening times. In 2023 and 2024, the Maison d’Izieu commemorates the 80th anniversary of the children’s home.

© 2023, Gary Lee Kraut

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It’s fair to say that an exhibition about war photography is always timely—inevitably, somewhere, there’s an armed conflict going on. But Women War Photographers has now opened while Russia tries to execute its cruel, murderous design on Ukraine, and its showing at the Museum of the Liberation of Paris makes it all the more poignant.

The timeliness that the show’s organizers had in mind in mounting this exhibition likely had less do to with any ongoing war than with the current vogue for “lest we forget the contribution of women” shows. Case in point, just a week earlier Pioneers: Women Artists in Paris of the Roaring Twenties opened at Paris’s Luxembourg Museum.

But it’s impossible to consider the powerful images of the eight photojournalists presented in this exhibition without thinking about the war now killing, maiming and displacing Europeans in numbers not seen since the Second World War. That the photographers are women is nearly irrelevant.

Co-organized with Dusseldorf’s Kunstpalast, the exhibition presents the work of photojournalists who covered armed conflicts from 1936 to 2011, from the Spanish Civil War to the War in Afghanistan by way of WWII, Vietnam, Northern Ireland and conflicts in the Middle East, Latin America, Chad and elsewhere. Of the eight war photographers—three French, three American, one German, one Dutch—two were mortally wounded while on assignment and a third came to suffer from depression, possibly linked to PTSD.

Their documenting of armed conflicts includes a wide range of approaches and angles, from closely cropped intimacy to direct confrontation to devastated landscapes and stolen lives. Heightened by the brief descriptions that accompany each image, each photographer exposes brutal and (at the time) newsworthy narratives.

(Meanwhile, the Army Museum at the Invalides has put together a studious exhibition entitled Photography at War, showing April 2 to July 24.)

Several images in Women War Photographers show survivors’ or combatants’ attempts at solace, of normalcy and of moving on among the ruins, but there are no saviors. The photographers often reveal the disequilibrium between the armed and the unarmed or lesser armed. They document various facets of threat, menace, aftershock, pain. They reveal the death and destruction that’s left after a moment or extended period of combat. The vast majority of images are in black-and-white. Several photos present views of life pursued but none presents a vision of hope.

In a photograph by the American Carolyn Cole, several men appear to be peacefully, seductively asleep side by side though the image’s context tells us they have been killed.

A rare scene of joy is found in an image by French photograph Christine Spengler showing Cambodian boys playing in the waves with spent rocket shells. But that joy is immediately dismissed, even mocked, when, in the high-contrast photograph beside it, we see one of those boys in tears, kneeling by a body bag that, the caption explains, contains his father. Beside that second photograph is a hazy image of Phenom Penh, bombed and in ruin.

Along with biographical panels for the eight photographers that can make us want to learn more about each of them, the texts and captions accompanying each image provide valuable insights and information for understanding the moment in history or the given conflict. Some are also accompanied by information about the editorial choices made in publishing the photograph or series of photographs, adding to the interest of the exhibition.

The biographies, captions and other explanations—all are in French and in English—provide enough information for a multilayered reading of the singular and collective images of the eight photographers: as individual narratives, as reflections of the broader armed conflict, as works of photojournalism, and as the work of women.

Of those possible readings, the latter turns out to be the least significant. This is not the war photography version of Mary Cassatt among the Impressionists. Clearly, each of these photojournalists was/is courageous, determined and professional. Thankfully, little attempt is made to distinguish theirs from the work of their male counterparts or to describe the particular struggles that women photographers may have in carrying out their assignments in a war zone.

In fact, the overriding subject here turns out to be less the photographers themselves—however worthy they are of awards, further study and movie biopics—and more the significance of the photographic narratives they presented of the various conflicts when published in the Western press. That in turn invites us to examine our own understanding of and reaction to images on our screens.

We are to assume that the photographs presented here were published for their newsworthiness—to tell a certain “truth” of the moment. However, their very attempt at presenting newsworthy “truth” reminds us that images can be used as propaganda and manipulation by news corporations, social networks and their users, politicians and government or governmental lapdogs. Even in their brevity the texts serve as a reminder of the importance of critical thinking when it comes to our own viewing, discussion and sharing of images and videos.

The intensity of the narratives told in Women War Photographers makes this gathering of images and texts horribly mesmerizing and insightful and this exhibition among the most notable in Paris this season.

The eight photographers

Gerda Taro, pseudonym of Gerta Poharylle, born in Germany in 1910, covered the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and 1937 along her partner Robert Capa (pseudonym of Endre Ernő Friedmann). She was fatally wounded while covering combat action in Spain in 1937, shortly before he 27th birthday, and is buried in Paris’s Père Lachaise Cemetery.

The American Lee Miller (1907-1977) was the rare female photojournalists to be accredited by the U.S. Army as a war correspondent in Europe during the Second World War, beginning a month after the D-Day Landing in Normandy and through to the liberation of Nazi concentration camps and the end of the war. Previously she had worked as a fashion model, photo portraitist and fashion photographer. Though she continued to work in the 1950s and eventually switched gears to become a gourmet chef, she was increasingly debilitated by depression or PTSD, likely caused by her war experience. She is the subject of the documentary Lee Miller, a Life on the Front Line.

Born in Paris, Catherine Leroy (1944- 2006) earned her chops as a war photographer at the age of 22 as a U.S. accredited photographer during the Vietnam War despite having no prior professional experience as a photographer. In 1976, for her coverage of the Lebanese Civil War, she was the first woman to receive the Robert Capa Gold Medal honoring the “Best photographic reporting from abroad requiring exceptional courage and enterprise.”

Françoise Demulder (1947-2008) was another Paris-born photographer who was largely self-taught. She launched her career by reporting on Vietnam War. For her coverage of the Karantina massacre in 1976, when Christian militias killed hundreds of Palestinian refugees during the Lebanese Civil War, she became, the following year, the first female photographer to receive the World Press Photo Award. She went on to cover numerous conflicts around the world.

The early career of Anja Niedringhaus was devoted to covering the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s. She went on to cover war zones in Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza and Libya, and in 2005 receive a Pulitzer Prize for her work in Iraq. She was killed during combat in Afghanistan while covering the country’s presidential elections on April 4, 2014. In 2015, the International Women’s Media Foundation created The Anja Niedringhaus Courage in Photojournalism Award in her honor.

Frenchwoman Christine Spengler, born in 1945, simultaneously took up photography and photojournalism when she found herself in the midst of a war zone while traveling through Chad. Before long, in 1972, she was covering The Troubles in Northern Ireland, followed by assignment in Vietnam, Cambodia, Western Sahara, the Middle East, Afghanistan and Irak.

American Susan Meiselas, born in 1948, has covered wars and humanitarian crises in Central and South America. She was awarded the Robert Capa Gold Medal in 1979 for her documenting of the Nicaraguan Revolution. Information about her career and current projects can be found on her own website.

Carolyn Cole, born in 1961, another American, has worked for the Los Angeles Times since 1994. Her coverage of war zones began several years later. She was awarded the Robert Capa Gold Medal in 2003 for her coverage of the siege by the Israeli Army at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. The following year she received a second Robert Capa Gold Medal for her coverage of conflicts in Iraq and Liberia. She also received a Pulitzer in 2004 “for her cohesive, behind-the-scenes look at the effects of civil war in Liberia, with special attention to innocent citizens caught in the conflict.”

Practical information

Women War Photographers / Femmes Photographes de Guerre, March 8 to December 31, 2022, at the Museum of the Liberation of Paris*, 4 avenue du Colonel Rol-Tanguy, Place Denfert Rochereau, in the 14th arrondissement, across the street from the entrance to the Catacombes. Open Tuesday-Sunday, 10AM-6PM.

Entrance the permanent exhibition is free, however there is a fee to enter this temporary exhibition.

Purchase of a timed tickets for the exhibition is recommended: 8€ + 1€ online reservation fee. Free entrance for those under 18, with no additional online reservation fee for a timed ticket.

*I refer to the museum where this exhibition takes place as the Museum of the Liberation of Paris however it’s full name also includes the General Leclerc Museum and the Jean Moulin Museum. All three are related to the Second World War. Though each is called a “museum” they are separate sections of the same structure. Read this France Revisited article about the museums.

© 2022, Gary Lee Kraut

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Corinne LaBalme has selected some of the most notable shows of the 2017 summer art and exhibition season.

Aix-en-Provence. At the Hôtel de Caumont, a mansion representing Aix’s most sublime example of 18th-century aristocratic architecture: Alfred Sisley. June 10 to October 15; Giovanni da Rimini. June 14 to October 8. Fondation Vasarely: Vera Rôhm. June 26 to August 31.

Giverny. To prolong a stay in Monetland or not, that is the question. Musée des Impressionismes. Tintamarre ! Musical Instruments in Art (1860-1910). Through July 2. Henri Manguin. July 14 to November 5.

Grenoble. Before or after a stroll through the valleys or a hike in the Alps. Musée de Grenoble. Henri Fantin-Latour. Through June 18.

Lille and suburbs. Further reasons to step off the train. Palais de Beaux-Arts. Carte Blanche to Three-Star Chef Alain Passard. April 8 to July 16. LaM (Villeneuve): Michel Nedjar. Through June 4. The Magical Art of André Breton. June 24 to October 1.

Marseille. When a city reputed to be one of France’s grittiest puts its trash on display. MuCEM. Vies d’ordures: The Economy of Trash. Through August 14.

Metz. The Pompidou Center continues to spread its wings. Centre Pompidou – Metz. Infinite Gardens: Giverny to the Amazon. Through August 28. Fernand Leger. May 20 to November 23.

Nice. Difficult to pull oneself away from the promenade and the old town, but here goes: Musée National Marc Chagall. Chagall’s Sculpture in the 1950s. May 27 to August 28.

Paris. Choices, choices, choices.
Grand Palais. Rodin, The Centennial Exhibition. Reserve in advance because the Rodin show, on the 100th anniversary of the sculptor’s death, is one of this summer’s blockbusters. Jardins (Gardens). Through July 24.
Musée Marmottan. Camille Pissarro: The First Impressionist. Put this on your list, Paris revisiters. Through July 2.
Centre Pompidou. Cy Twombly. Through April 24. Walker Evans. April 26 to August 14. David Hockney. June 21 to October 23.
Palais Galliera. Dalida: A Pop Diva’s Wardrobe. April 27 to August 13.
Musée Guimet. Kimonos. Through May 22. Japanese Countryside from Hokusai to Hasui and Asian Gold – Mnaag Masterpieces. June 22 to September 4.
Musée Picasso. Olga Picasso. Through September 3.
Musée d’Orsay. Mystic Landscapes – Monet to Kandinsky. Through June 25; Cézanne’s Portraits: June 13 to September 24.
Musée du Louvre. Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting. Through May 22.
Musée du Luxembourg. Pissarro à Eragny. Through July 9.
Musée Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Karel Appel. Through August 20. Derain, Balthus, Giacometti. June 2 to October 29.
Musée Jacquemart André. From Zurbaran to Rothko, The Alicia Koplowitz Collection. Through July 10.
Musée de Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac. Picasso Primitif. Through July 23. Sacred Maori Stone. May 23 to October 1.
Fondation Louis Vuitton. Art/Afrique, le nouvel atelier. April 26 to August 28.

Pau. Musée National du Château de Pau. Portraits of Children from the Gramont Collection. Through May 21. Treasures of the 16th Century Navarre Court. April 7 to July 9.

Pont-Aven. Art call in Brittany. Musée de Pont-Aven. Modernity in Brittany/1: From Claude Monet to Lucien Simon (1870 – 1920). Through June 11. Modernity in Brittany/2: From Jean-Julien Lemordant to Mathurin Méheut (1920-1940). July 1- January 7.

Rouen. Trying to avoid OD-ing on Impressionism, Normandy gets hooked on Picasso. Musée des Beaux Arts. Picasso at Chateau Boisgeloup. Musée de la céramique. Picasso at Vallauris. Musée Le Secq des Tournelles. Picasso and Julio Gonzales: Works in Iron. All April 1 to September 11.

Versailles. Château de Versailles. Peter the Great, A Tsar at Versailles in 1717. Tzar Putin himself inaugurated this show alongside French President Macron. May 30 to September 24.

Vichy. At various locations in this old spa town, Festival Portrait(s), a celebration of portraits of all kinds, including those based on fiction and conceptual schemes. June 16 to September.

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So subtle is the interplay of surveillance and performance that it took this reviewer several minutes to grasp the true significance of the abundance of security personnel. As I visited the allocated space within the glass and steel building designed, I was increasingly enthralled by the way in which the foundation’s curators, financiers and merchants have create, inadvertently perhaps, a choreography of security personnel that offers deep insights into the work of the artists and the working of the foundation itself.

We spectators, arriving on Sunday afternoon with invitations and those invited to pay at the gate, were like shadows milling about, an unobtrusive audience leaving free range to the gestures, expressions and movement of the security personnel, themselves circumscribed by the work they “guarded.”

Dennis Oppenheim’s Table Piece, 1975, acquired by the foundation in 1996, occupies the larger of two rooms downstairs, where the presence of the vigils turns an examination of public discourse into a curatorial tour de force, however unintentional that may be. Oppenheim’s table organizes the space like the basement ping-pong table of American suburbia. Two doll-like figures, resembling Paul Simon circa 1969, sit on chairs at opposite ends of the long narrow table. One is gold and is dressed in a black suit, the other silver with a white suit. They call to each other “black, white, light, dark.” Evocative enough on its own, the installation is given greater presence thanks to the foundation’s decision to place a guard at each end, the one stout and vague in his gaze, the other a slight brune with glasses. But the overall effect would be narrow were it not for the presence of yet another guard in a corner of the room. Long jet black hair, an apprehensive stillness over a poised stance, she approaches after a moment the corpulent fellow and mouths something unheard as the Paul Simons quicken their dialogue of “black, white, light, dark.” (Performers will likely change through the length of the show.)

The French word for security guard is vigile. Linguistic “false friend” though it may be, I cannot help but think of the performers here as “vigils.” Their presence made for a tremendous performance piece in the eyes of this reviewer. Removed from the spectator yet one with him they stand near walls at the juncture of surveillance, witness, patience, participation.

Each work revealed itself in its dialogue with the vigils, and those interactions are so seamlessly spread throughout the space that one feels no dead zones of the they type that one might feel in, say, the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris. Indeed, it’s unlikely that a public museum could achieve the intensity of what is best called Dance of the Vigils.

A most extraordinary dialogue between the “vigil” and the artwork is found the smaller room in the basement. The room is dominated by Ron Mueck’s In Bed, 2005, created for the Ron Mueck exhibition of 2005. A stunning piece on its own, a giant figure lies as though in bed, knees raised, and watches visitors enter the room. Ill? Depressed? Psychotic? Dreamy? Expecant? Renounced?, the viewer wonders before noticing the guard standing awkwardly nearby, anxious witness to both the expression on the face of the figure and the wondering gaze of the viewer. But no? He is not witness; he is protagonist, a man caught between two worlds—the reality of the viewer and the unreality of the sculpture. He now skirts the room, entrapped, a man who cannot escape his larger-than-life wife or mother but aware that he must perform his “duty.” This is my favorite of the vigil scenes.

There are many others worthy of attention. A vigil at the bottom of the stairs, standing against a canary-yellow wall, is doomed, it seems, to watch visitors descend the final 6 steps after the landing. What, one wonders, is he watching, is he waiting for, is he expecting? He appears to be counting our rise and descent: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6… 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. I went up and down several times trying to grasp the nature of his performance. The rest rooms, I discover, are to his left down the hallway, one wall of which is bordered by transparent installations echoing the glass and steel of the building. The vigil against the canary yellow wall, counting our steps, therefore stands as ironic commentary on the transparency of numbers: years, dates, visitors, costs, etc. Fascinating.

The foundation’s anniversary exhibition opened against a backdrop of rain clouds, sun showers, bright blue sky and May greens. It is dense with quiet staging of the apprehensive gaze of the personnel and the works on display. These “vigils,” each with a subtle mix of attentiveness, sexuality and distraction are dressed in black suits, black shoes, black ties and white shirts for the men, narrow black slacks and prudent blouses for the women. Some wear an ear piece, but for what?, the viewer wonders. In anticipation of Godot? of a bejeweled donor? of the entrance of an artist with “vision” or “plastic wit”?

One male performer touches his earpiece as though to wonder if an organization so well-funded and clear-goaled a man might stand alone, apart, disconnected, perhaps abandoned. It’s a wonderful echo of Il Cavaliere di Dürer, 2011, by Allessandro Mendini, the work beside which he stands.

No sooner does that brief action take place than our—my— attention is drawn to that of two vigils standing together the playscape towers of Bodys Isek Kingelez’s Projet pour le Kinshasa du troisième millénaire, 1997. Approaching, I hear that they are discussing New York. Brilliant.

Inside, Raymond Hains’ Brise-lames de Saint Malo, plage du Sillon, 1994, and Jean-Michel Alberola’s Eclairage en groupe, 2014, serve as timid reminders that we are in France, otherwise the dearth of works by French-born artists draws attention to the lonely thumb in the garden by sculptor César, that seems to say that the new realism of the past 30 years is how little attention living French artists get (deserve?) on the international market. The panels describing the individual works are in French while the “vigils” are unnamed, undated. A brave curatorial approach, that.

I visit the garden, as is called the greenery that surrounds the glass box of the building. Through the transparent wall a vigil checks her phone. She is standing behind the brightly colorful partition “OMG!” by Allessandro Mendini and Peter Halley, 2014. How wonderful this illusion of hiding behind the bright wall while seen through the transparent wall, as though the latter were coverage by the mere fact of being an enclosure. Archictect Jean Nouvel should be pleased by this homage to his work.

At the food shack by the garden café, its chairs empty but for the rain, a vigil, the only “client,” stirs his coffee, his red umbrella by his side. “Les photos,” he says, “sont interdites.” “Il est interdit,” he says, “de fumer dans le jardin.” His tone is light, apologetic yet clear, an magnificent articulation of the use of the word “interdire” (to forbid) in contemporary art foundations, where freedom of commerce encounters freedom of art under the complex gaze, at once placid and anxious, biding and operational, in need of coffee or a smoke or a message from the world beyond, of a dozen security figures. A celebration of artistic freedom circumscribed only by the forbidden and the unsaid.

I return inside, drawn still to this extraordinary performance of the security personnel. At times the “vigils” don’t seem to watch as much as they do to submit to the space, the sound, the color, the movement. I look up to the bookshop balcony. There, arms crossed, stands a vigil with shave head—an excellent choice of figures since we think of him as the most guard-like. He stands as straight-faced commentary on the hinge of the conversation between commerce and art; the vigil against the canary yellow wall stands between foundation and basement; the vigil furtively checking her phone stands between the opaque and the transparent; the vigil by In Bed acts out the works emotions in a confrontation between display and (in)security; a vigil stretches discreetly from the back of the screening space, loosening wrists, stretching shoulders.

Is this planned or unintentional or inevitable? No matter. I cannot imagine a better way to celebrate the foundation than with this Dance of the Vigils.

1984-2014: 30 Years at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, May 10-Sept. 21, 2014. 261 boulevard Raspail, 14th arrondissment. Metro Raspail or Denfert-Rochereau or RER Denfert-Rochereau. Open daily except Monday 11am-8pm and until 10pm on Tuesday. 10€; 7:€ for students and those under 25; free for children under 13 or on Wednesday for those under 18. For further information see www.fondationcartier.com.

© 2014, Gary Lee Kraut

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Perhaps too much, for speaking of Dali in those terms has a tendency to mask the fact that he was the last giant of the history of 20th-century art, an equal to Picasso, and that this surrealist who swore by the Renaissance and often dug into the repertory of old master put all of his theatricality, heresy and provocation into his work as a painter.

More than 30 years after the extraordinary Salvador Dali retrospective of 1979-1980 at the Pompidou Center in Paris, when Dali (1904-1989) was alive but in ill health, Dali is back in an impressive retrospective running through March 25, 2013. The show examines his life, warts and all, and once again shines light on the power and the originality of his art, an art of technical perfection that culminated between 1925 and 1950, with a major boost coming in 1929 when he met Gala.

The exhibition opens with Dali in an Egg, a large photograph by Philippe Halsman that superbly translates the Catalan artist’s fascination with this symbol of intrauterine life and rebirth (renaissance). The egg is omnipresent in Dali’s work and it stands atop his home at Port Lligat and is repeated on the roof of his Theater-Museum in Figueres.

Among the 120 paintings in the retrospective are a number of works that are rarely shown in public along with many famous painting, including masterpieces from the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid and The Persistence of Memory (1931), also known as Soft Watches, the small painting on loan from New York’s Museum of Modern Art that is so emblematic of Dali’s universe.

His method of “critical paranoia” is highlighted in the show, presented in such a way as to enable several levels of reading an image, as in his famous interpretation of Jean-François Millet’s painting The Angelus, which Dali returned to obsessively.

A wealth of drawings, objects, films and audio also contribute to a successful staging of the retrospective which includes kiosks and various theatrics (Face of Mae West Which May Be Used as an Apartment, with the possibility for visitors to actually sit on her couch-lips). Dali’s interest in performances and black-humor happenings is revealed, as when he plays a harpsichord in which a cat meows each time a key is pressed.

The retrospective examines at length the artist’s last twenty years of work, which are often disparaged. During that time Dali experimented with new approaches, for example pop art and action painting, which demonstrate his openness to the contemporary world even if the result isn’t convincing. He then returned to the old masters before finding inspiration in the mathematical theory of catastrophes. The genius had disappeared long before the end of the story.

Since Dali’s death in 1989, his abundant production has led to copies by forgers and reproductions on millions of posters and has served as a library of images and ideas for numerous artists: from Jeff Koons to Matthew Barney by way of Piotr Uklanski. Altogether these uses have troubled and even tarnished Dali’s image, leading me to give one piece of advice: Don’t miss this retrospective.

Dali Retrospective at the Pompidou Center, November 21, 2012 to March 25, 2013. The Pompidou Center is open daily except Tuesday 11am to 9pm. www.centrepompidou.fr. Entrance to the museum’s collections and exhibitions: 13€.

Catherine Rigollet is the founding editor of L’Agora des Arts, www.lagoradesarts.fr, a website dedicated to the arts. As a journalist she worked for Le Point, L’Express, Le Figaro Eco and the Les Echos group before taking over the culture and exhibitions section of Air France Magazine. She is the author of a dozen books about art, history, heritage and social issues including Les Conquérantes (Nil Editions, 1996) and Les Francs Maçons (JC Lattès 1989).

This article first appeared in French © Catherine Rigollet in L’Agora des Arts (see original article here) and has been translated and adapted, with permission, for France Revisited by Gary Lee Kraut.

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In September and October, wearing the last vestiges of their summer tan, Parisians re-enter the hallow grounds of the Louvre, the Grand Palais, the Orsay and other such temples of art and culture.

The faithful are joined in queue by inhabitants of more distant suburbs and cities and by visitors from foreign nations anxious, they, too, to receive the grace of art and the glorious sensation, upon exit, that they have witnessed and felt and perhaps even understood the profound depths of Edvard Munch or of Cézanne or of the relationship between Giacometti and the Etruscans.

Here are the wheres and the whens of this cult:

Matisse, Cézanne, Picasso—the Adventure of the Steins at the Grand Palais,  Oct. 5-Jan. 16.
Beauty, Morality and Pleasure in Oscar Wilde’s England at the Orsay, Sept. 13-Jan. 12.
Edvard Munch, the Modern Eye at the Pompidou Center, Sept. 21-Jan. 9.
Fra Angelico and the Masters of Light at the Jacquemart-André Museum, Sept. 23-Jan. 16.
The Forbidden City, Emperors of China and Kings of France at the Louvre, Sept. 29-Jan. 9.
Of Toys and Men at the Grand Palais, Sept. 14-Jan. 23.
Giacometti and the Etruscans at the Pinacothèque de Paris, Sept. 15-Jan. 8.
Cézanne and Paris at the Luxembourg Museum, Oct. 10-Feb. 26.
Pompeii, an Art of Living at the Maillol Museum, Sept. 21-Feb. 12.
Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch at the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris, Oct. 18-Jan. 8.

(c) 2011, Gary Lee Kraut

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But the take-away isn’t understanding Van Dyck’s place in art history or even being able to distinguish this artist from others but the wonder of looking into the eyes of the people he painted. Hated the paintings of English aristocracy, their faces and poses made skin crawl, but got drawn into many of the others. Loved the painting below, a double portrait with two brothers. It’s the contrast and similarity of the two that I find so striking, the dreary irony in the eyes of the one, the fleeing yet intense gaze of the other.

Van Dyck at the Jacquemart-André Museum, October 8, 2008 to January 25, 2009.
158 boulevard Haussmann, 8th arrondissement, Paris. Metro Miromesnil or Saint-Philippe-du-Roule.

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