This biography, at the articulation of the personal story and the research projects, is a late work of memory without returning to the archives.
*
Links in blue refer to long written topics . I am the author of the photos presented here, except for a few marked ©.

LIST OF WORKS

COMMITMENT

Après l’Océan (After the Ocean) – Shad [Frazer James] ©tomaBaqueni

Anthropology is a discipline at the crossroads of other human sciences, but its centre of gravity is fieldwork, with a high level of involvement on the part of the researcher. Originating during the colonial period in the 19th century, it was tasked with gathering knowledge about the indigenous populations of conquered territories. This is what linked it to cinema.

The 7th art was born at the same time with the basic vocation of “understanding man”. According to Marey, to study body movements, and according to the Lumiere brothers, to “offer the world to the world” [Tavernier]. It is the only discipline that has maintained a relationship with photography and cinema. I threw myself into this coexistence, which was not always a peaceful one!

8 neighbours – Fatima puts her veil back on – Paris

Since childhood, I’ve had a deep-seated need to move off-centre, with a marked taste for encounters that combine otherness, questioning and confrontation. Following an initiation to Africa by Marc Piault, who I’ll talk about later, I received my first research funding for my thesis at the LAS (Social Anthropology Laboratory).

At the same time, I joined Claude Meillassoux’s CNRS team which, with Maurice Godelier, was trying to adapt Marxist concepts to indigenous economies. My discovery of anthropology provided a link with my student commitments to the extreme left. I’ve always abhorred racism, colonialism, preconceived ideas, overbearing positions and abuses of power.

In the 1990s, Marc Augé launched the “anthropology of the contemporary”, opposing an anthropology of “ disappearing worlds” invested with traditions outside their confrontations with the modern world: migrations, wars, famines, violence… Urban anthropology already existed and the entire discipline was to focus on the niches of modernity: doctors’ surgeries, farmers’ unions, hunting, factories, courts, ghettos, etc. … places invested by a new generation of young researchers.

My cinematographic choices, linked to issues of confinement and exclusion, naturally led me towards the movement that is sometimes referred to as the “Augé years”. This was a time when writing through images was well received.

Little Go girls – Les Millionnaires district – Abidjan

PORTRAITS AND INTERVIEWS – PRESS

Aaton advertising for Time Code – ©beauviala-jp

Videos