A captivating investigation into a compromising photo of a president

LeMonde

21-06-2025

This is the story of a compromising photograph, one that had stayed secret for half a century. It was finally published in 1994, on the cover of Une jeunesse française ("A French youth") by Pierre Péan, a book that traced the early life and first political activities of President François Mitterrand (in office 1981-1995).
In the black-and-white shot, Mitterand is 26 years old and wears his hair slicked back, with a white pocket square folded in a triangle in his jacket pocket. He is listening attentively to Philippe Pétain, then 86 and the leader of Vichy France, who had received him as part of a delegation of managers from a prisoner aid center. The photograph was taken on October 15, 1942, in Vichy, where Mitterrand stayed for several months, mingling with Pétain-aligned circles, before he eventually forged closer ties to the Resistance.
For much of his political career, Mitterrand denied this troublesome past, and later downplayed his degree of involvement with Vichy. When it was made public, the photograph caused a scandal. "It is difficult to discover that Mitterrand was not only Barrèsian in literature (…) but also a Croix-de-Feu in politics," said Mitterand's ex-prime minister Lionel Jospin, in 1994, referring to the antisemitic writer Maurice Barrès and a nationalist organization of veterans from the inter-war period.
In the late 1970s, the journalist Patrice Duhamel heard about a mysterious document incriminating the Socialist politician for the first time. When Péan's explosive book was published, Duhamel wondered: How did this provocative photo remain hidden for so long? Much later, the mystery came back to haunt him. He decided to investigate, which led to a captivating book: La Photo ("The Photo," untranslated).
Into the fireplace