Les Murs de Fresnes - 10 photographies originales dont un cliché inédit

Set of 10 original photographs taken at Fresnes prison in April 1945, reproduced in Henri Calet’s Les Murs de Fresnes, except for one unpublished print. Numerous editorial notes and measurements on the versos in preparation for publication, two bearing the stamps “Bernès, Marouteau & C^ie”; black felt-tip retouching visible on five prints, pencil retouching marks on the two photographs of the food tins.

A set of images taken at Fresnes prison in April 1945, which give voice to a place where under the Occupation too many lives came to an end. These photographs reveal the mute history of the imprisonment of French and foreign resistance fighters—graffiti by those condemned or awaiting judgment, bare cells, and endless corridors.

Two photographs preserve the last traces of the Resistance heroine and feminist Berty Albrecht at Fresnes: her death certificate bearing the chilling words “condamnée par autorité Allemande / Décédée cause inconnue” (condemned by German authority / Died by unknown causes) and a view of her burial site, a simple stake marked with the number 347 in the prison’s vegetable garden, among countless anonymous graves.

With the exception of one unpublished photograph, the images were used to illustrate Henri Calet’s major investigation, Les Murs de Fresnes, in which, even before the armistice was signed, he strove to trace “ceux qui sont passés par là,” (those who were there) particularly the victims of the Nacht und Nebel policy.

Henri Calet was recruited to the Resistance newspaper Combat by Pascal Pia and Albert Camus in 1944. A few months later, during Camus’s absence in Algeria in the spring of 1945, Calet briefly oversaw the magazine supplement. On 24 April 1945, as Allied forces encircled Berlin, Calet went to Fresnes prison where he visited some of its 1,500 cells. Controlled entirely by the German authorities from 1943, it had been the site of imprisonment, torture, and executions. Transformed into a penal colony, it also served as a staging point from which thousands of French prisoners were deported to Buchenwald. Yet, as Pierre Benetti reminds us, “At that moment, ‘Fresnes’ referred above all to the incarceration of former collaborators, of whom Laval and Brasillach were the most notorious.” It was therefore a race against time to recover the traces of prisoners already partially erased by damp and by the arrival of collaborators who had taken their place. His investigation formed part of a wider collection effort by the Ministry of Prisoners of War, Deportees, and Refugees, which provided him with a partial record of graffiti inscribed by inmates on their cell walls. Calet wrote an initial report (Combat, Sunday magazine edition, no. 5, 28–29 April 1945), soon expanded into a book, Les Murs de Fresnes, printed in November of that same year. The work, at once painful and necessary, catalogued the written traces left by prisoners, and included 15 black-and-white photographs and 10 facsimile documents. It was one of the first campaigns to record prison graffiti. A disturbing inquiry, appearing just as the camps were being opened: Calet confronted the horror of the concentrationary universe only eleven kilometres from Paris, perpetrated by Frenchmen upon Frenchmen, and upon foreigners who had come to defend France.

The 10 photographs in this set were  reproduced in Calet’s book, with the exception of one unpublished image showing the prison’s imposing central corridor, a variant of the frontispiece. Four photographs record inscriptions made by prisoners—French and foreign resistance fighters—while awaiting trial, transfer, or execution, scratched with nails and pins not only on cell walls but on other surfaces. The group also includes two fascinating still lifes of aluminium food tins crudely engraved by inmates, one bearing a poem: “Souviens-toi victime inconnue / D’un monde sans cœur ni cerveau / De ceux qu’une ardeur ingénue / Dressa contre l’Ordre Nouveau / Jérôme Verdilhac,” another by an FTP marking a bleak birthday: “Joseph Galousstoff / dit ‘Le Bolchevique’ / a mangé dans cette gamelle / le jour de ses vingt ans / arrêté le 26 avril 1942.” One photograph preserves the trace of one of the many “fragments of life […] torn from the wall,” catalogued by Calet: “f/o john d. harvie / j 27573 / prisoner here / july 14/44 / – aug 19-44 god save the king! long live the allies! / oh to be in canada!” Pencil notes and layout measurements on the versos attest to the detailed preparation for reproduction—the graffiti captured on one image even reinforced in ink for greater contrast: “schneider - ch / gardien de la paix au 14e / Brigadier du 7e arrt. / arrêté pour dépôt d’armes / résistance dans la / police le 5 – 6 – 44. / Pensée à la femme Chérie / et ma petite jane qui a 12 ans / Peut être adieu! / car j’attends: le verdic [sic],” with crop marks at the corners for its publication in Les Murs de Fresnes (p. 30).

The four views of the prison and its dilapidated cells preserve for posterity the reality of the inmates: “Un lit de fer, que l’on relève le jour, une paillasse, une porte, un judas, une fenêtre à barreaux […] À plusieurs dans une même cellule, parfois cinq, ou six, pendant les années d’affluence, quand les Français étaient traqués en France,” Calet comments opposite the reproduction of one of the photographs in this set (Les Murs de Fresnes, p. 15). Calet’s work also included an immersion in the few surviving prison archives, which, by chance, had not been destroyed: among them, photographed as damning evidence, the death certificate for “cause inconnue” of Berty Albrecht, who, after being tortured by Klaus Barbie, died at Fresnes a few days later. The visit ends at the cemetery, with the photograph of Albrecht’s grave included in this set. This image is the only record of her first and shameful “resting place,” before her remains were transferred in November 1945 to the Mémorial de la France combattante at Mont-Valérien.

Most of the photographers remain anonymous—three photographs were taken by a photographer for Combat, likely including the unpublished variant of the frontispiece credited to Combat in Calet’s book. Four photographs, including those relating to Albrecht, were the work of a certain Mlle J. Gérard, otherwise unknown. Her name appears again in the 1950s in photographic credits for reproductions of artworks. In 1956, Francis Ponge, Calet’s close friend, wrote to him that he had contacted her after finding her address in the directory, though the outcome of that exchange is unknown. The two photographs of the food tins were produced by the agency Bernès, Marouteau & Cie, based in the 14th arrondissement, which specialized in photographing works of art.

Calet’s book was regarded by André Malraux as “un des documents les plus saisissants qui aient paru sur la Résistance, non seulement en France, mais dans tous les pays où la Résistance a eu lieu.” (letter to Calet, 5 February 1946). Calet pursued his inquiry in Paris and its suburbs for many years, in search of the heroes who had carved their cries into the walls of Fresnes. He published four reports in the daily France-Soir (“Les murs de Fresnes ont parlé,” 7–14 February 1946). The final part of this monumental effort of remembrance was published under the title “Hôtel des revenants” in the journal Évidences in November 1953. No photographs other than those already published in Les Murs de Fresnes accompanied these later texts.

Moving and unique historical artefacts from a site marked by the trauma of Nazi crimes and the shame of collaboration. As Michel P. Schmitt observes (“Une épigraphie tragique. Les Murs de Fresnes d’Henri Calet,” Écrire sous l’Occupation, 2011), this photographic ensemble, offering striking visual evidence of those dark years, “gives greater strength” to the sensitive monument that is Les Murs de Fresnes.

Provenance: Jean-Pierre Baril, to whom we extend our warmest thanks for his assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.