The Shaved Woman of Chartres

In August 1944, as the town of Chartres was freed from Nazi occupation, Robert Capa pointed his camera at a scene that most people would rather forget. A young woman walks through the crowded street, her head freshly shaved, a baby held tightly against her chest. She had been accused of collaborating with the Germans, and the child she carries was rumored to be the son or daughter of a German soldier. The faces around her tell their own story, some curious, some laughing, all caught up in the strange excitement of a public punishment.

Capa built his reputation photographing combat, but this image steps away from the battlefield to show something harder to look at. Across France, tens of thousands of women labeled "tondues," or the shorn ones, endured this same humiliation as their towns were liberated. Shooting in the honest, unposed style of documentary photojournalism, Capa recorded the moment exactly as it happened, without cleaning it up or softening the mood. Instead of a triumphant liberation, he gives us the messy aftermath, the revenge and mob justice that came alongside freedom. The picture stays with you because it does not take sides, and it quietly asks how ordinary people can turn on one another when a country is settling its scores.