TCHAD

1980-1997


José NICOLAS



This post is also available in: French

My connection with Chad goes back to my childhood. In the early 1960’s, with my father who served in the military we landed in Faya-Largeau, capital of northern Chad. I remember a life where time had no influence on us, where I fully lived this freedom with the happiness of innocence. In 1978, as a young 22-year-old paratrooper, I come back to this country to evacuate European nationals at the time of violent clashes between various Chadian factions. Two years later, my unit is on a camp during four months, first in the east, in Abéché, then near Lake Chad. With my camera, I devote myself to a pleasure of curiosity and contemplation. These are my very first pictures of Chad followed by other stays up to the end of the 1990’s, as a photoreporter for Médecins du Monde (1983) and for the Sipa agency. Even if I’m still covering the zones of combat (the Libyan attack of N’Djamena in 1986, the defeat of the armored troops of Gaddafi in Wadi Doum in 1987), I also crisscross the desert areas of this country seeking for poetry, attaching to simple life scenes (markets, hospitals, schools,…) and to multiple faces I met, taking my photographs free from any constraint. Even if my travels have always brought me over the capital, my idea was to gather these archive images to pay tribute to these women and these men, proud and worthy, to this forgotten people.” José Nicolas



Editor : EDITIONS IMOGENE
Publication year : 2018
Number of pages : 128
Language : Français-Anglais
ISBN 13 : 978-2900840016