The “Look” of History: Photography and Paris’s 1944 Liberation

This paper will explore the relationship between the photograph and the event by examining the photographic narratives of Paris’s 1944 Liberation published in cheap books and pamphlets in 1944, 1945, and 1946. It explores how these pamphlets and books circulated a vision of the weeklong battle for Paris as the iconic battle of France’s liberation. These books present remarkably similar photographic narratives of French heroism and unity in the face of German oppression. And yet their photographs also allow us a window onto what exactly French people at the time imagined a historically significant event would look like. Using journals and eyewitness accounts as well as contemporary reviews of these books, this paper explores how the Parisians staged history in the present and used photography to reproduce and circulate this “look” – not years or decades after the 1944 – but in the very weeks and months that followed.