Mémoire | Publication
Sous terre - Antoine Lecharny and Annette Becker
"Sous terre" (Underground) emerged from the encounter between the work of historian Annette Becker — a specialist in memory studies, extreme violence against civilians, and genocides, particularly during the First and Second World Wars — and the photographs of Antoine Lecharny, a young photographer and visual artist. From 2021 to 2024, he undertook a photographic project devoted to the “Holocaust by bullets” and its memory in Eastern Europe and the Baltic states. In the absence of significant visible traces of these massacres, he photographed landscapes that have returned to a relative ordinariness.
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From 2021 to 2024, the young photographer Antoine Decharny undertook a photographic project devoted to the “Holocaust by bullets” and its memory in Eastern Europe and the Baltic states. In the absence of visible traces of these massacres, he photographed landscapes that have returned to a relative ordinariness, conveying the passage of time and the tangible forgetting of History at work. They also speak to certain contemporary realities in these countries, where signs of resurgent Nazi ideology can still be observed. The project also unfolds against the backdrop of the ongoing war devastating Ukrainian territory.
More akin to a photographic wandering than to a field investigation, this large-format book - in the tradition of many art books - features black-and-white photographs that offer a dark, enigmatic, unsettling vision of these snow-covered “bloodlands,” where no bodies, objects, smells, or meaningful traces of the “Holocaust by bullets” remain, save for plaques, monuments, or Jewish cemeteries more or less neglected and dating from before the Second World War. Without detailed captions, apart from place names, the photographs are nonetheless accompanied by the young photographer’s sensitive commentaries.
In counterpoint, Emeritus Professor Annette Becker, a specialist in the two World Wars, particularly mass violence against civilians, their memories and their erasures, quite literally “brings back” the human beings who were present in these places between 1941 and 1945. In a fruitful dialogue with the photographer, she draws on available sources and archives. Annette Becker’s text opens with a moving excerpt from Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman, before clearly and thoughtfully recalling what the “Holocaust by bullets” was in its specificity. She underscores the book’s central aim: to show how the evocative power of literature and art and the rigor of historical scholarship complement and sustain one another, particularly in transmitting the memory of the Holocaust.
Format: 22 × 30 cm / 220 pages / 83 photographs / €45
This bilingual French/English book, published by Éditions D’une rive à l’autre, received support from the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah.
Publication date: October 2025
Exhibition
Antoine Lecharny’s photographs will be on view from Friday 13 February to Saturday 25 April 2026 at Galerie Sit Down, 4 rue Sainte-Anastase, Paris 3rd arrondissement.
► Read the press release
Talk
In the presence of the authors and Marin Karmitz, filmmaker and producer, founder of MK2.
In conversation with Luba Jurgenson, Professor of Russian Literature at Sorbonne Université, editor and writer.
Thursday 27 November 2025, 7:00 pm
Mémorial de la Shoah
7 rue Grégoire L’Asnier
75004 Paris
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