Exécution des otages, prison de la Roquette, le 24 mai 1871. Metropolitan Museum of Art, online database: entry 302335

Exécution des otages, prison de la Roquette, le 24 mai 1871. Metropolitan Museum of Art, online database: entry 302335

During the summer of 1871, in the aftermath of the defeat of the Paris Commune, Eugène Appert(1831-1890), a Parisian portrait photographer and royalist, published Crimes of The Commune.  The series, consisting of nine photographs, purported to show the rebel’s criminal and brutal nature. These were, in fact, the first known political photomontages – fabricated images which combined fact with fiction, propaganda with historical narrative and actors with documentary footage. The Crimes depicted firing squads and murders committed by the Communard revolutionaries. Appert hired actors and restaged scenes of firing squads, and later pasted faces of Communards taken from trial photos.