Bonn’s pictures explore Africa’s painful history and his family’s role in it. He grapples as well with the many challenges Africa faces in the future, in holding onto its traditions, in maintaining its natural beauty and in grappling with urban sprawl. These threats to the Africa Guillaume Bonn has come to know so well are here captured and reproduced for the first time.

To illustrate a bit of his past, Bonn has also opened up his family photo album which illustrates four generations of family members who called Africa home. Here, we see Bonn’s great grandfather in military uniform during an expedition to Niger and Sudan, or his grandfather hunting a giant crocodile in Madagascar or his father wearing a colonial era-pith helmet while being cradled by his nanny. The album photographs Bonn shares show us the complicated and troubled history of Africa’s colonial past—the trouble left in the colonialists’ wake—while also revealing the personal, human scale of passion for and interest in this unique and unmatched region of the world.

French photojournalist Guillaume Bonn is a third generation born in Africa. He has covered the continent for the last decade, traveling everywhere from war-torn Congo, Darfur and Mogadishu where he was shot at, and kidnapped. He is a regular contributor to The New York Times and Vanity Fair and his work has also appeared in publications like Newsweek and Time among others. He has directed four film documentaries and "Dying To Tell the Story," a 90-minute documentary where he worked as a cameraman, was nominated for an Emmy Award.

Relié: 144 pages

Editeur : Empire (13 janvier 2007)

Langue : Français