Élie Kagan

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Elie Kagan, 1995

Élie Kagan (born March 26, 1928 in Paris , † January 25, 1999 ibid) was a French press photographer . He was best known for his courage during the massacre of Algerians demonstrating in Paris in 1961; his name came up again when the police chief of that time, Maurice Papon , was on trial in 1997/98.

Life

As the son of a Polish-Jewish mother and a Russian-Jewish father, he grew up in the French capital under the German occupation in a climate of anti-Semitism and fear from the age of twelve . He escaped the deportations of French Jews.

He has worked as a photographer since the 1950s, but never for a photo agency or as an editorial photographer for a newspaper. He was dependent on selling his photos himself in the editorial offices and was often hit by financial difficulties. He published in newspapers on the political left such as the Liberation , Le Nouvel Observateur or La Vie Ouvrière , but also for Témoignage chrétien , Les Lettres Francaises and La Tribune Juive .

Without respect for authorities, he had been close to the French Communist Party (PCF) since his youth , but in 1948 threw condoms at its general secretary Maurice Thorez because he was annoyed that the party saw contraception as an "American bad habit". He also abused German tourists.

Kagan also photographed the events of May 1968 ; he was friends with Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg , whom he also photographed. During the Paris massacre in the evening and night hours of October 17, 1961 (French: nuit noire , black night ), few photographers were brave enough to document the violence of the police against supporters of the FLN and were so adept at sending their material protect. Papon had ordered a curfew on Algerians, which was broken and violently enforced by the police. But Kagan hid in the urinals of the metro , for example . When the publisher François Maspero planned to publish a book with Kagan's material shortly afterwards , the photos were confiscated by the authorities. The photographer's estate is now in the Bibliothèque de documentation internationale contemporaine .

Kagan photographed the protests of French Jews around the Lischka trial in Cologne from 1977 to 1979 .

literature

  • Élie Kagan, Patrick Rotman : Le Reporter engagé: trente ans d'instantanés. Métailié, Paris 1989, ISBN 2-86424-062-9
  • Jean-Luc Einaudi: La bataille de Paris, 17 October 1961. Éditions du Seuil, Paris 1991
  • Fils et filles des déportés juifs de France. Homage to Elie Kagan: photographe militant aux cotés des FFDJF Paris: FFDJF, [1998?]

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Caroline Apostolopoulos: Élie Kagan et la nuit du 17 octobre 1961. (PDF, French) , accessed on April 21, 2012
  2. ↑ Nina Pauer: Europe and the Question of Violence - The Federal Republican Response to the Algerian War using the example of the massacre of October 17, 1961 in Paris. , in: Dietmar Huser (ed.): France's Empire Strikes Back: Social Change, Colonial Debate and Migration Cultures in France in the Early 21st Century. , Kassel University Press, Kassel 2010, ISBN 978-3-89958-902-3 (pp. 157–188, here p. 169)
  3. ^ Anne Klein (ed.): The Lischka trial: a Jewish-French-German memory story. A picture reading book . Berlin: Metropol 2013. Pictures on pp. 113–117
personal data
SURNAME Kagan, Élie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French photo reporter
DATE OF BIRTH March 26, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH January 25, 1999
Place of death Paris