From Desert : dans une continuité photographique

From Desert, Léo Coulongeat’s project, is therefore part of a continuity of documentary photography initiated in the 1920s in the United States and part of a legacy of reportage photography.

Indeed, the photographer is interested in the men who populate the desert, in a frontal way; he also has the concern to inform on the topicality of their living conditions by representing them in the singular landscapes in which they evolve.
He combines photographic techniques of photo-reporting and exploration of new horizons through aerial photography.

A bit of history

Many people venture into the East, into Egypt, to immortalize these great expanses of sand, these landscapes of mountains, dunes or oases, as well as the archaeological remains of lost civilizations. Even Rimbaud, in his quest for an Ethiopian adventure, will try his hand at photography. The photographs of John Beasley Green or Maxime Du Camp reinforce the idea of a fantasized Orient that had already been put in place by Orientalist painting in the 18th and 19th centuries. For them, the desert is an inhospitable place with its own light, colours, shapes and aesthetics. This interest in the East continued with the invention of colour photography, which made it possible to give an image closer to reality. Photography then became the privileged witness to the social, political and environmental changes brought about by Westerners and colonialism.