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In July 1918, while serving in the army, the poet Paul Eluard wrote the following lines:

For years I had a face of no use,
But now
I have a face to be loved,
I have a face to be happy.

With its title liberally inspired by Eluard’s poetry, this exhibition aims to shine a light on how the Great War upset not only the love lives of those who lived through it, but also the behavior of subsequent generations.

A collection of sentimental-patriotic postcards
Sentimental-patriotic: a made-up adjective to describe the combination of sentimental emotions and patriotic values conveyed by the postcards printed during the Great War.

Collections don’t always start for a good reason, and I had no good reason to start collecting these postcards.
For years, whenever I happened across them, I bought up postcards featuring sentimental themes printed between the end of the 19th century and the nineteen-fifties, due to the pure kitch of the images.
What is it that makes certain people, myself included, take an interest in something, like these postcards, which is generally considered to be of poor taste? A penchant for esthetic transgression and a jealous curiosity for the innocent expression of sentiments, I suppose.
Of all the postcards which I rooted out at jumble sales and elsewhere, I always preferred those from the Great War. Due to their characteristic photomontages and poetic citations. Over time, I came to amass more than 6000 different postcards. It is estimated that around 10.000 cards of this type were printed in the roughly 1500 days between the Summer of 1914 and the Autumn of 1918, each produced in tens of thousands of copies.
Millions of paper kisses!

It was only gradually that I came to realize the sacred value of these relics. They belong to the history of the Great War.
People who are interested in photography generally don’t care much for postcards, no doubt for precisely the same reasons that attracted me to them in the first place! And also because being mass-produced, they have little commercial value. However, need I repeat it, a photograph is by its nature destined to be reproduced over and over again, to be seen by as many people as possible. .

Postcards therefore are entitled to their place in the history of photography, and especially those of the Great War due to their visual and poetic characteristics.

Michel Christolhomme