RECONSTITUTIONS - Immersion in Living History

From the hunter-gatherers of the Palaeolithic to the soldiers of the Second World War, by way of the great age of chivalry and the battles of the First Empire, reenactors seek to represent the lives of our ancestors as closely as possible to reality. Analysed by historian Martin Bostal, a specialist in recreations of the past, Barry's photographs offer an unprecedented immersion in this world of enthusiasts: this unique book is a true journey through time, rediscovering the great periods of our history.

Since 2021, Barry has been travelling across France, camera in hand, to cover events bringing various moments of our history back to life. From the Hundred Years' War to the Normandy Landings, from the Stone Age to the Norman Conquest of England, the thousands of photographs he has taken bear witness to the passion for History kept alive by male and female reenactors, who have rarely seen their efforts showcased so effectively.

Martin Bostal holds a doctorate in history and medieval archaeology. He shows us the value of historical reenactment in understanding History. Their aim: to represent as closely as possible the material and daily life of various periods of the past by embodying characters, real or fictional. To do so, they draw on the documentary sources available for the chosen period: archaeological objects, iconographic representations, written testimonies and, for more recent times, photographic documentation.

In a Roman legionary camp, at the court of a feudal lord, alongside the "poilus" in the trenches of the Great War: Barry's work plays on the codes of the "historical" image in cinema and makes these different reconstructed pasts compellingly credible, leaving us to judge their authenticity. Through a chronology retracing certain stages of our history, this work invites the reader to discover the richness of reenactment practice, in a journey blending the quality of the reconstructions with a reflection on our knowledge of the past.

A journey through History: 17 chapters covering Prehistory, the Gallic world, the Roman Imperial legion, the barbarian era, the Viking age, the Byzantine Empire, society around the year 1000, Normandy in the time of William the Conqueror, knights and feudal lords, the Hundred Years' War, the late Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Eighty Years' War, the First Empire, the Battle of Verdun, the Phoney War and the Battle of Normandy.