At Visa pour l’image, in Perpignan, in 1998, it was not a press photo stricto sensu that got people talking. But a portrait of Jean-Marie Le Pen, taken in 1997 in his Montretout residence in Saint-Cloud, by a certain Helmut Newton. The fashion and nude photographer, who died in 2004, exhibited his photos intended for the press as part of the festival. The Australian of German origin spoke at the time, during an interview with , behind the scenes of the photo where Le Pen proudly poses with her Dobermans and that was chosen as a front page for the death of the founder of the National Front.
“It’s an order from New Yorker. In my contract with them, it is stipulated that each of my photos is published full page. But there, the director called me and told me that the portrait I would take of Le Pen would not have the space to which I am usually entitled. I told him they could release it in postage stamp format, I would be happy to do that. This seemed important to me.
“They sent me articles and photos to prepare myself. I arrived at the leader of the National Front a good hour early, as I usually do, to get to know the place. I met Le Pen. He was charming and very cooperative. I first staged a first photo where he had a large Bible in his hands. I had a harder time convincing him to pose with his dogs. He didn’t want to, but I was able to persuade him. My work as a portraitist depends a lot on my efforts at seduction. But I know that. (…)
“I have to do everything to get the portrait done. Even when I don’t agree with my role model’s opinions. After all, I am a photographer, not a judge.”
The resonance of this portrait with a photo showing Hitler alongside his German shepherd taken by Heinrich Hoffmann seems obvious: “When I take a photo, I am innocent, I think of nothing”simply replied the photographer, who fled Nazi Germany in 1938.
Animals have always been a subject of contention in the Le Pen family, with the daughter preferring to appear with her cats. So much so that Marine’s departure from the Montretout manor in the summer of 2014 would, according to some, be linked to the death of her cat Artémis. A disappearance to which Sergeant and Major, a pair of red stockings crossed from Beauceron, who had taken over the manor from Gaulois and Gitane, their distant predecessors immortalized by Helmut Newton, would not be strangers.
Source: www.liberation.fr
