The statue of Adolphe Thiers, depicted seated in an armchair, is suspended from a crane above the rooftops. This photograph belongs to Jahan's clandestine report on Parisian statues requisitioned during the Occupation, which later became the book Death and the Statues, conceived with Jean Cocteau.Statues always fascinated Pierre Jahan, whose first successful documentary photograph was The Devout Christ of Saint-Jean Cathedral in Perpignan, published in 1934 in collaboration with Raymond Gid, showcasing the cathedral's statues. This fascination would accompany him throughout the years of the occupation of Paris during the Second World War. In December 1941, Pierre Jahan undertook clandestine documentary work to immortalize the toppling of statues ordered by the Vichy regime to benefit the German war effort. After the Liberation, this body of images sparked the interest of Jean Cocteau. From this artistic collaboration came, in 1946, the first edition of the book La Mort et les Statues, which combined Jahan's photographs with texts and captions written by Cocteau; this work remains one of the most important testimonies of the Occupation of Paris.