The recovered image of Raoul Minot, the mysterious photographer of occupied Paris – Cyber Tech

So right here he’s, the forgotten hero… On this beforehand unpublished photograph, in all probability taken within the late Thirties, Raoul Minot seems to be round 50 years previous. He was a good-looking man, with white hair and a black swimsuit. His gaze, directly assured and mild, displays the pleasure of a division retailer govt at Paris’ famed Printemps. Raoul was employed by the famend Parisian division retailer in 1911 as a handkerchief salesman, finally promoted to under-manager within the inventory rooms, the place merchandise was saved, after his return from the Nice Warfare in 1919. Le Printemps Haussmann was his life: his spouse, Marthe, additionally labored there as a cashier. That they had a teenage daughter, Jacqueline. They lived in Bécon, within the western suburb of Courbevoie. In some ways, they had been an unremarkable, odd household, so to talk.

By no means decide a ebook by its cowl. Raoul had a knack for fooling individuals. This seemingly odd ID photograph, marred by staple holes or paperclip marks, as if it had had a number of lives on varied paperwork, really hints at an distinctive life. Above all, it provides us one thing essential: a face.

All of a sudden, this once-anonymous newbie photographer, a shadow amongst shadows within the German-occupied Paris of 1940-1942, emerges earlier than us, watching us, taking our consideration. We will think about him on the prowl together with his little Kodak Brownie 6/9 digital camera. From Montmartre to the Gare Saint-Lazare, from the Champs-Elysées to Concorde sq. and the close by western suburbs, he tirelessly took shot after shot, quietly build up a treasure trove of some 700 photos: abandoned streets, flea markets, German troopers strolling arm-in-arm with French ladies…

Le Monde reported all of this in a sequence of 5 articles. This investigation, which started 4 years earlier after an odd album was discovered at a flea market by Stéphanie Colaux, a documentary movie producer with a ardour for images, in the end led to the identification of Raoul because the creator of those forbidden pictures. A lot of the them had been dated, numbered and featured ironic feedback in regards to the “Fritzes” (as he calls the Germans) on the again. On the time, such audacity from an unaccredited Frenchman may have resulted in extreme punishment. For the person from Bécon, it meant deportation.

The final a part of our investigation ended with a paradox: there was no photograph of Raoul himself. How may we put a face to this identify ignored by Resistance specialists? Would we have now to make do with snippets of data taken from his army file within the archives of Allier, the center-France area the place he was born? Let’s recall these clues: “1.76 m”; “black” eyes and hair; “bony” face; “rounded” brow; “broad” nostril. All of this described him in his youth when he served heroically in World Warfare I and was awarded the Croix de Guerre. The person within the newly found small photograph, clearly older, not has “black” hair nor a “bony” face, however it’s positively him. This discovery was made due to a Le Monde reader.

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