Discover the exhibition
"Julia Pirotte, photographer and resistance fighter"
#expojuliapirotte

Julia Pirotte (1907-2000), was born in Konskowola, Poland, to a poor Jewish family. Arrested at the age of 17 for her involvement with the communist youth, she spent four years in prison. In 1934, she fled Poland with the help of the International Red Aid. Arriving in Belgium, she married the worker and trade unionist Jean Pirotte, and met the future resistance fighter Suzanne Spaak. Thanks to the latter, she undertook studies in photography and began a career as a photojournalist.

In May 1940, following the invasion of Belgium by Germany, it took the path of exodus. She settled in Marseille where she surveyed the region for the local press.

His reports show the precarious living conditions of the inhabitants of the Old Port, the lives of Jewish women and children in the Bompard camp, the maquis of the resistance. Resistance that she joined very early with her sister Mindla Diament. Liaison officer for the FTP-MOI, she transports leaflets and weapons and makes fake papers. On August 21, 1944, present alongside the insurgents, she photographed the Liberation of Marseille.

After the war, she joined Poland. There, she had a double look: a country where anti-Semitism is not dead, but in reconstruction. She stopped her career at the end of the 1960s. From the 1980s, his photographs were presented in numerous exhibitions in Arles, New York, Charleroi, Paris, and Warsaw.

Discover the dedicated website of the exhibition 

Photo : Julia Pirotte, self-portrait, Marseille, 1942. © Museum of Photography, Charleroi