IRASEC

Exposition at the LFIB

Bertrand — 2018-12-17T17:00:00Z

Claire Tran took part on Tuesday, December 18th to a special day at the Lycée français international de Bangkok (LFIB), around the exhibition A photographic narrative of the Asians at war. With Din Buadaeng (doctoral student in history at the University of Paris Diderot), they provided guided tours of the exhibition with several classes of 14 years old and 17 years old students. Followed by an exchange with the oldest students on the profession of historian and the work of researcher.

Thanks a lot to the history teachers Stéphane Gallardo and Elodie Massé for their welcome. Congratulations to the teachers for organizing this day and to the students who participated in the Siamese Soldier's Letters competitions involved in the Great War!

Eugène Burnand Exhibition

Bertrand — 2018-11-06T17:00:00Z

Alliance Française, 179 Thanon Witthayu
Lumphini, Pathum Wan - 10330 Bangkok
9-23 novembre 2018

Thanks to François Doré from the Librairie du Siam, the IRASEC and the Alliance Française are pleased to present 10 original portraits of Asian soldiers painted by Eugène Burnand (1850-1921). They are part of his collection of soldiers of the Great War drawn between 1917 and 1921 by the Swiss painter. After studying at the École des Beaux-Arts in Geneva and in Paris, the landscape painter became interested in other genres such as religious painting. He was also passionate about engraving and illustration, collaborating with periodicals like L'Illustration. He is most well-known, however, for his series of pastel and pencil portraits representing soldiers of the Great War. During his military mission in Paris in 1917, he stayed at rue d'Assas, near the seminary of Saint-Sulpice, where passing troops were housed. He drew his first models there and then traveled through France, including Marseille and Montpellier, where the French and British colonial troops were stationed. His models were paid but some refused payment as they considered it an honour. Most are identified by name, some only by rank, unit, or country of origin.

Burnand organized his first exhibition of about eighty portraits in May 1919 at the Musée du Luxembourg. Then, with the help of the Allied military authorities, he continued his project by producing a catalog of soldiers who participated in the conflict. He was impressed by the multiplicity of nations involved in the conflict and the variety of cultures represented. He wanted "to study the modern soldier from a psychological point of view” and add to this initial program, more ambitious intentions, such as ethnographic interest. Eugène Burnand's series of soldiers's portraits was the subject of a book foreworded by the French Marshal Foch, The Allies in the War of the Nations, published in 1922, shortly after his death.

Asians in World War One

Bertrand — 2018-11-05T17:00:00Z

A Visual History of the Indians,
Siamese and Vietnamese at War

Chamchuri 10 Bldg., 7th Floor - Chulalongkorn University
November 9^th - 23^rd 2018

The First World War was the first conflict to be photographed and the first in which pictures were actively exploited and controlled in support of the war effort. From WW1, photography became a powerful and established medium of mass communication. Most of these pictures are coming from the French archives and the private archives of the Prince Chakrabongse. The pictures come from three majors archival holdings in France : The Établissement de Communication et de Production Audiovisuelle de la Défense (ECPAD), The Service Historique de la Défense and La Contemporaine. An important part of these visual sources were mainly produced by the Section photographique des Armées, created in 1915 by the French Ministry of War to counter the strong German propaganda. Beside the official visual archives, these institutions have also collected private albums of amateur military photographers.

What do we know about the daily life of these hundreds of thousands of Asians coming massively on the European and Middle East battlefields between 1914 and 1919 ? What do we know about their experience of discovery in European societies and of cohabitation with Western common people in radically difference cultural and climatic contexts, plunged in the hell of trench warfare or of weapon factories ? Among the great diversity of sources (the army's postal censorship commission, intimate letters, the press, memoires, and diaries), which can tell us more about their life experience of total war from below, visual materials constitute a key perspective. These photographs constitute a more intimate perspective of these men at work or at the frontlines even if most of them were staged.