right on target
With the wonderful job 1000 front pagesnewspaper Team Revisits 76 years of newspaper and sports history. Front pages that speak volumes about champions, notable events, but also the evolution of our society and information methods. Informative and nostalgic.
This is a remarkable photograph with 1,642,502 copies printed. We see three football players in blue clothes. Meeting Djorkaeff is knee-jerk, ecstatic. Behind him, Emmanuel Petit opens his arms and welcomes the happiness that surrounds him. Number 10 on the back, one name, Zidane. Two words on men: For eternity “. Indeed this one Team it is forever etched as the moment it captures. For all time. This “first French sports daily” symbolizes the identity acquired over time. A short caption and iconic photo, sometimes accompanied by a pun. Alain de Martignac’s moment shows the immense happiness that both a nation and the three players involved in France’s three goals will be fleetingly happy with. This page combines the three main criteria considered by Pascal Glo, who selects and presents these thousand UNES: sports, emotional and commercial values.
However, this was not always the case, and a reproduction of the first pages of this newspaper, which originally appeared only three or four times a week, vividly illustrates the evolution of communication. From the first issue printed on February 28, 1946, it was necessary to provide as much information as possible on the first page to attract the potential reader, because the means of communication were rare and did not change with time. We’re sometimes looking for a main title drowned in multiple inserts with arrows heading to photos placed at the bottom of the page in the 80s. The distance between the “Heart of Nice and the skirt of Nürnberg shook Real” in 1960 and the magnificent “Olympic Laure” during the Laure Manaudou title in 2004 is huge. Later. “Or Manaudou”, in a reminder that the reader is not always aware of and that the book mentions from time to time. In 1978, “Mundialissimo” began to become one of the trademarks of the daily newspaper, the same as Liberation, to present the world of Argentina.
During interesting thematic presentations, we learn that these front pages are sometimes programmed and imagined several days in advance, like feature articles. It is the team that composes, imagines and discusses it. And sometimes it misses. Pascal Glo is worthy and honest to note these mistakes: behind Gatlin, the forgotten Olympic champion in gymnastics, 100 meters or more shocking, the simple flag of the Olympic title of the French handball players who replaced Messi, the mistakes of Emilie Le Pennek arrival at PSG. The arrival of the Argentinian increased both the number of sales for commercial reasons and the relationship with public priorities. The history of front pages also shows how women’s bravery has struggled to make the front page, an honor Serena Williams has never held.
Sometimes the wrong choice is simply a reflection of an era, such as the title of the Ventoux summit classification in 1967, which, at least in large print, ignores the death of Tom Simpson, a symbol of the difficulty in commemorating those times. it is called “doping”. On the other hand, we put Okana’s sad face on the front page, Jeannie Longo’s face covered in blood, or Roger Rivière’s wife’s visit to the hospital after her collapse in Perjuret, options that are no longer available today.
Another notable development is the uniform color used for the background for a long time: pink paper on Saturdays and yellow on Mondays. A player who, like Zidane, has appeared on the front page more than 500 times, Platini will be published exclusively in black and white in the tones of the Juventus jersey. At the beginning, the often monochrome color will be exclusive for a long time, it is used to announce a certain event: the Olympic Games in Grenoble, the final Saint-Etienne Bayern in Munich… Another important change that is not fully reflected in the book: which will say goodbye to the transition to the tabloid format in 2015 we had to welcome this newspaper with open arms.
Thus, this retrospective considers the evolution of the world, information and the way it is transmitted. When reproductions are large enough, we like to carefully consider other elements of the front page. Thus, the front page contains advertisements for cognac or whiskey, or eccentric or foreboding information on the production. And then for a few years the price rose from less than 1 euro to 2.30 euro today. Time is going.
Although we may regret that the sixties and seventies are rather understated, the photographers are not sufficiently lit, and some of the old reproductions are of mediocre quality, on the whole it is remarkable and important. This amazing work that we will leave lying on the coffee table is one that we pick up and flip through to pass the time. Then we stop at a full or other page in postage stamp format and have fun deciphering the margins, secondary headings. We are going back in time. With nostalgia. And he often regrets it.
Team. 1000 Units. Sun Publications. A selection of text, research and front pages by Pascal Glo. 400 pages. 35€.
