The Colours of Our Memories - Michel Pastoureau 2012

The sad tale of young Philippe
Daily Life

My first journey abroad was to Switzerland, a country which, for a variety of reasons, has over the years become my second homeland. I was nine years old when I first discovered it. It was on the occasion of a winter-sports trip organized by the group of Wolf-Cubs (at that time known as a ’pack’) to which I belonged. In truth, the place where we stayed was in the French Alps, in Haute Savoie, but it was only a few hundred metres distant from the Swiss frontier. We crossed that frontier every day, either on foot or on skis. In order to avoid possible hassles with the customs officials, the organizers of our little group had requested that every child should come equipped with an identity-card. Of course, none of us had until then possessed one. This was in the mid-fifties, a time when plenty of adults were likewise without one. In France, there was no rule according to which anybody was obliged to possess a national identity-card. My father, who was born in the Orne region in 1912 and died in that of Mayenne in 1996, had passed the whole century without any identity documents, not even a driving licence. Happy man! Happy times!

In 1956, the business of acquiring a national identity-card resembled an assault course, particularly for a child. He had to present himself at the town hall in school hours, accompanied by one of his parents and equipped with various documents that were hard to obtain. He then had to fill in questionnaires with lots of tiny boxes, know how to sign with a proper signature, submit to the repugnant procedure of fingerprinting without messing everything up and, most importantly, supply identification photographs that were ’in conformity with the regulations’. Obtaining those photographs was by no means easy. It is true that machines of the automatic photography booth type did already exist, but they were few and far between and, like telephone boxes, were almost always out of order. Furthermore, they produced photographs in which everyone, adults and children alike, resembled ex-convicts. It was on this account that some families opted to apply to a professional photographer for photographs of their children. It was more expensive but the results were closer to their expectations.

That was what the family of my classmate Philippe did. He, like me, was a Wolf-Cub in the Saint-Lazare pack. I knew him well for we both belonged to the same ’sixer’ of six Wolf-Cubs, but I did not like him. He was a ’show-off’, very sure of himself, whose parents were wealthy and let you know it. There was even a television in his home, which in 1956 was a sign of considerable wealth (these days, that is no longer the case). For this famous identity-card, his father, no doubt just as much of a show-off as his son, had had him photographed in colour, a rare procedure in those days. Philippe was proud of his photos and brought them to Wolf-Cub meetings on three consecutive Thursdays, making a great, pushy fuss of exhibiting them. He was the only one amongst us to possess such treasures. We were jealous, for we could only produce ordinary black-and-white photos. Those colour photos of our classmate, looking much too well-behaved in his Sunday best, seemed to us both wonderful and, at the same time, an insulting affront, a narguerie, a word much in vogue among schoolboys at that time. And Philippe did indeed affront us with his splendid, insufferable photos.

But we were soon avenged. His father was late in organizing his son’s identity-card; and when, about ten days before our departure for winter-sports, the two of them turned up at the town hall, the civil servant in charge rejected the famous colour photographs. They were, he claimed, unacceptable because they were in colour. The father lost his temper and threatened to bring the influence of invented important figures to bear. But it was all to no avail. The photographs would have to be taken again, this time in black-and-white. There were more dramas, followed by a total collapse, for the business dragged on for several days and the identity-card was not ready in time. Philippe did not accompany us to winter sports and so did not discover Switzerland that year. Not knowing the cause of his absence, we thought he must be ill and even felt quite sorry for him. Not too much though. It was only much later, upon our return, that we learnt of the juicy fate of the colour photos and, with the cruelty of nine- and ten-year-olds, mocked our nasty little classmate. For several weeks, his pride prevented him from returning amongst us.

The sad tale of young Philippe is less anecdotal than it seems. It underlines the degree to which, fifty years ago in France, colour photography was still regarded as something suspect and inaccurate. Not only was official and legal documentation expressed in black-and-white, but that was also the case for everything exact, serious, accurate and true. Colours were reserved for frivolity, anything picturesque, leisuretime and even pleasure and debauchery. Admittedly, colour photography had not yet acquired the qualities that it manifests today, including in the domains of cutting-edge science.

In the course of one half-century, practices, techniques, codes and value-systems have certainly changed; it is now obligatory to produce colour photographs in order to obtain most identification documents; and those photos, furthermore, must respect extremely stringent rules concerning format, framing and the viewing angle. Even smiling is forbidden, which certainly says something about present-day society … As for black-and-white, considered in the past to be truer and more precise, it is nowadays considered inadequate and less faithful. Not everywhere, however: there are still organizations that insist that candidates for employment provide a CV accompanied by black-and-white photos. Their numbers are dwindling though — at least in France they are, while in Germany they remain in the majority.

Such oppositions between colour and black-and-white are not new. They first appeared toward the end of the fifteenth century, when engraved images, printed in black ink upon white paper began to be widely diffused. The introduction of engravings represented a veritable revolution in comparison to the images of the medieval period, which almost always incorporated several colours. In the world of the arts, particularly that of painting, such controversies were at the heart of debates which, throughout the following two centuries, set in sometimes violent opposition those who supported the primacy of drawing against those who considered colour images to be superior. The former were even then arguing that colour was a useless artifice, an over-beguiling cosmetic, a deception that altered forms, abused the view of spectators and distracted them from what was essential. The latter declared that colour alone made it possible to attain to the truth of beings and things and that the effects and endeavours of painting were primarily linked with colour. Later, we shall see why it is that I have enlisted in the camp of the latter.