• The exhibition “Women Photographers of War” presents the work of 8 photojournalists at the Musée de la Liberation in Paris until December 31.

  • "The Bombing of Phnom Penh" by Christine Spengler is the visual of the poster.

  • “Photos that are too horrible create a feeling of rejection.

    I always try [...] to avoid sensationalism.

    “ she says in an interview for

    20 Minutes.

"The female gaze does not exist", insists Christine Spengler.

In the exhibition,

Women Photographers of War

,

we discover eight unique looks that Sylvie Zaidman, director of the Paris Liberation Museum, has been able to highlight with an intimate and educational wandering.

And rather than insisting on the place of women in a male environment, the exhibition celebrates the glance of these photographers on their times.

From film to digital, from Europe to Africa, they make sensitive and precise information possible.

The Bombing of Phnom Penh

, Christine Spengler's most famous photo, serves as the poster for the exhibition (until December 31).

The 77-year-old photographer, who has covered many conflicts, has agreed to tell behind the scenes of this photo, and other stories about her work, at

20 Minutes

.

When Christine Spengler picks up the phone from her home, she talks about everything.

But nothing, with her, doesn't exist.

Each sentence counts, she weighs her words, she gets lost in one story to come back to another, she tells like no one else.

An apocalyptic photo

“It was noon when I took this photo.

Doesn't look like huh?

".

The sky is so black, the atmosphere so heavy that the photo seems straight out of the night.

Christine Spengler is sent to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in 1975, for Associated Press.

One Sunday, she is about to go out with her camera.

“But all the other photographers tell me that Sunday is war rest.

It is a tacit agreement between the armies.

I can hardly believe it.

As I am a beginner, I plan to work every day to learn my trade.

So this Sunday I go out and ask my driver to get out of town.

".

Christine Spengler pauses in her story.

“All of a sudden, the sky turns black and 220 shells will fall in twenty minutes on the center of Phnom Penh.

It was the first time the Khmer Rouge bombed the city.

And I was there before, during and after.

".

Of these smoking ruins, she will keep only two shots: a first without a human face, and a second with this desolate character.

“My master: Francisco de Goya”

Christine Spengler does not talk about her career without mentioning those who guided her.

There is her brother, Éric, with whom she left for Chad at the age of 24.

“We had sworn to each other to take a long trip to the end of the world, perhaps never to return.

".

They are taken prisoner by rebels for twenty-three days.

The day of their liberation, she sees two soldiers going to the front, hand in hand.

She takes her brother's Nikon and captures the moment.

" I am upset.

I discover a vocation: I want to become a war correspondent to testify to just causes.

And by just cause, I mean always being on the side of the oppressed.

".

His master in the art of composing a photograph is Francisco de Goya.

She discovered it at the age of 7 at the Prado Museum in Madrid.

“This photo in Phnom Penh, I took it wide-angle.

Goya, when he painted, he showed everything that was happening around.

There is always space at the top to contextualize.

Every time I photograph, I think of him and take a step back.

»

“It's not true that a picture equals a thousand words.

»

When she goes on assignment, Christine Spengler forgets the colors.

Dressed in dark, she merges with her lens.

“The woman in black”, as she is nicknamed, imposes precepts on herself: “I move people in a particular way: I never show raw reality.

".

Photo bombing, she says, is a good example.

“The truth is that in the foreground of this photo were dozens of bloated bodies, charred in the furnace.

I decided that it was not necessary to show them.

Photos that are too horrible create a feeling of rejection.

I always try, like Robert Capa, to avoid sensationalism.

»

And when you think that Christine Stengler has said everything, there are still a few words left to her, which she delivers after a heavy silence.

“It's wrong to say that a picture equals a thousand words.

In that of the bombardment, the cries, the smells, the howls of the wounded, the neighing of horses rearing in the smoke are missing.

Later, I decided that anything I couldn't photograph I would write down.

That's why I wrote

A Woman in War

[her autobiography].

Because it allows me to tell, too, the cries and the smells.

»

While her photo

of The Bombing of Phnom Penh

is plastered four by three all over Paris in favor of the exhibition, Christine Spengler was surprised to see one day, under a giant poster, "a woman on the street, with all his gear”.

She took a photo of it and posted it on her Facebook account thinking of the Ukrainians who are also under bombs, and homeless.

Paris

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World

War in Ukraine: The 3,000 journalists on site are also engaged in "an information war"

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