Paris: Éditions du Compas, [1946]

In October 1941 the Vichy government decreed that statues of ‘no artistic or historic importance’ could be torn up for their metal content. In December the photographer Pierre Jahan, at considerable risk to himself, photographed them in a yard in Paris. This book was published in 1946 with photographs by Jahan and a text by Jean Cocteau, set in two colours in the same idiosyncratic Peignot typeface as Écrit dans l’ombre. It is one of the most beautiful photographic books of the 1940s. This copy is signed by Jahan.