Pascal Maitre

© Pascal Maitre

For 35 years and with deep journalistic passion, French photographer Pascal Maitre has put this most exciting continent on his agenda. His watchful and incorruptible eye has found gorgeous, captivating images in places where political and social upheaval shook the world. In his photographs Maitre subtly uses angle, light, contrast and colour to document Africa, touchingly, full of magic and fascination, with a deep respect for the African people.

Africa – this pluralistic, complex continent, all too often a subject of caricature, harbours exceptional men and women. „My work as a photojournalist has brought me mostly in contact with down-to-earth people, attached to a particular place“, explains Maitre. „Beings connected to the sky and the earth, seekers of water in the heart of the desert, of spirits in the bush. Fighters and poets. Sometimes we forget that the nameless people in our photographs are real historical actors. The men and women who haunt our pictures remain heroes, sometimes tragic and sometimes happy, of a story in which the photojournalist is physically present, but of which he is only a witness and not an integral element.“
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Pascal Maitre started his career as a photo journalist in 1979 in Paris. Today he is one of the world’s best photographers, working for prestigious magazines such as, National Geographic, GEO, Le Figaro or Paris Match. His photographs were shown at numerous exhibitions around the globe, including eight times at the photo festival Visa pour l’Image. Pascal Maitre worked as a photo journalist in more than 40 African countries, focussing on the fundamental themes of this inexhaustible continent: the African peoples and their ways of life, politics, conflicts, and traditions. In 2012, Maitre’s personal ‘best of’ selection was published under the title Amazing Africa. And in 2017 he published BAOBAB and When Light Will Touch Africa – the last one in cooperation with Jean-Marc Gonin, editor-in chief of Figaro Magazin.

Festival director Lois Lammerhuber talks about Pascal Maitre’s Exhibition