Le Temps des cerises. Fake, by Lia and Paolo Aldi. This work denounces the use of photography to create fakes. On the occasion of the Paris Commune uprising in 1871, some French photographers used staging and photographic photomontages to illustrate real events at which they were not present, presenting them to people as true. It was a new system of propaganda to discredit the enemy, in this case the Paris insurgents. In the photomontage by photographer Eugène Appert, photograph below, an execution was reconstructed and staged using extras and replacing the heads of the two executed men: Generals Jaques Léon Clément-Thomas, top left, and Claude Lecomte, top right. They were indeed executed, but not together as depicted here and not by direct order of the Commune. Mixed media: reproductions of a photomontage by Eugène Appert, reproductions of photos of the generals by Pierre Petit and Michel Berthaud, beeswax on wooden board. The dimensions are 40.5 x 40.5 x 2 cm. American box frame 44 x 44 x 3 cm. The technique used is photographic encaustic.
