L’aviateir «Pépete» vient d’abattre un «Taube» à coups de mitralleuse. Paris, 19 septembre 1915.
In 1915 Gimpel befriended a group of children from the Grenata Street neighborhood in Paris who had established their own “army”. He began to visit them regularly on Sundays, helping them to build their arsenal from whatever was to hand, providing direction in “casting”, and recording with his camera the army’s triumphs over the evil enemy, the Boche.
Gimpel was charmed by these children and came to know each of them well: the “chief”, the eldest in the garrison; his friend, who was conscripted to play the unenviable role of the Boche; and Pépète, who was “small, slightly misshaped, rather scrofulous, looking somewhat like a gnome” but who nonetheless played the part of an ace aviator. At the end of each session, Gimpel would reward the troops with barley sugar, causing all to shout with one voice, “Long live the photograph!”
quoted from Luminous-Lint online exhibition : Autochromes and Autochromists of WWI
From : La guerre de gosses, Léon GIMPEL, Paris, 1915
More images at Images en ligne de la Société française de photographie (SFP)
un regard oblique 