The story of a publication, by Olivier Lacroix, the photographer’s grandsonJahan didn’t want to circulate these pictures because the horror they depicted was abstract compared to the tragedy of the concentration camps. Jean Cocteau became friends with my grandfather in 1941, when my grandfather did a reportage about the writers at the Palais Royal. In ‘46, Jean Cocteau was visiting my grandfather at home and saw the photos of the pulled-down statues, completely torn off their pedestals, ready to be crushed, and shipped to Germany as scrap metal. Jean Cocteau decided to write the preface as well as the commentary for this book.Preface by Jean Cocteau The poet’s craft, a craft that cannot be learned, consists of placing the objects of the visible world, which the eraser of habit had made invisible, in an unusual position that strikes the gaze of the soul and makes them tragic. It therefore compromises reality, catches it out, unexpectedly floods it with light and compels it to reveal what it is hiding. Pierre Jahan brings us the striking proof of that. He secretly photographed the warehouse where Germany crushed, broke and melted down our statues. The result, thanks to the angle of these shots, is that even the most mediocre statue finds grandeur and a drama of solitude. I make way for him. A camera is nothing other than the third eye of the man who uses it. Jahan’s album is, then, a book of poems, admirable poems where the crime stands out even more glaringly than in the spectacle of rubble.