Jean MOULIN poses for eternity. Original photograph. 1940.

Jean Moulin (1899.1943)

Original photograph.

The most famous portrait of the resistance fighter.

Montpellier. 1940.

Silver gelatin print (24 x 18 cm) depicting Jean Moulin leaning against a stone wall, dressed in an overcoat and scarf, wearing a felt hat.

Stamps, handwritten annotations and silhouette of the resistance fighter on the back.

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This photograph of Jean Moulin contributed to building the legend of the Resistance hero. Taken before the Occupation, it was chosen by his sister for the ceremony of the transfer of his ashes to the Pantheon on December 19, 1964, and used by her in 1969 on the front cover of the biography dedicated to her brother.

This photograph reveals the very essence of the man: tenacity and selflessness, humility and discretion. Logically, and due to its symbolic power, it has become the emblem of the martyred resistance fighter arrested in Caluire on June 21, 1943, and who died a few weeks later under Gestapo torture.

Some commentators (including Laure Moulin herself) initially dated this event to after his suicide attempt of June 17, 1940, to explain that his scarf might have concealed his nasty scar. This is not the case. The circumstances are now known: while visiting his mother and sister in Montpellier for a few days in mid-February 1940, Jean Moulin was photographed by his childhood friend Marcel Bernard at Les Arceaux, near the Promenade du Peyrou.

This photograph also tells the story of a friendship. Marcel Bernard was young Moulin's playmate on the Champ de Mars in Béziers. Having lost his older brother, Marcel transferred his brotherly affection to his childhood friend. "Jean loved Marcel Bernard like a brother," Laure Moulin would later write. The two men grew up together and were inseparable, considering each other like brothers.

Very posed, and finding it too static, the photograph was not to Jean Moulin's liking, dissatisfied with the snapshot of his friend Marcel: "It's not very brilliant for a virtuoso like him" (letter of March 12, 1940).

Whatever the resistance fighter's point of view on this photograph, it remains today the embodiment of the greatness of this man who died for France.

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Bibliography (non-exhaustive):

JP AZÉMA, Jean Moulin: the rebel, the politician, the resistance fighter , Perrin, 2003.

D. CORDIER, Jean Moulin: the Republic of the Catacombs , Gallimard, 1999.

LEVISSE-TOUZÉ, D. VEILLON, Jean Moulin: artist, prefect, resistance fighter , Tallandier, 2013.

Laure MOULIN, Jean Moulin , Paris, Presses de la Cité, coll. « Coup d'œil », 1969.