Éric Manigaud FR, b. 1971

Éric Manigaud uses photographs from historical archives as the basis for his drawings. Working in series, he focuses on subjects such as the “Gueules Cassées” (the “Broken Faces”) of World War I, the bombed-out cities of World War II, patients in 19th-century psychiatric asylums, crime scenes from the early 20th century, and spiritualist photography from the 1920s and 1930s.

Manigaud is drawn to archival sources that often document the violent episodes that shaped Europe’s transition to modernity. He regularly draws on photographic sources from the period between 1850 and 1920, a time when photography was still regarded as a strictly objective and scientific medium.

More recently, he has created series on the Paris massacre of October 17, 1961, the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima, and the colonization of the Congo by France and Belgium. His latest series revisits Franju’s film “Le sang des bêtes.”