Fair trade is often subject to watered down representations. It refers to a more complex and subtle reality than the Padre Frans van der Hoff Boersma, co-founder of Fair Trade calls “Dignified poverty”.
The photographs of Lionel Astruc and Érick Bonnier describe this reality through the everyday life of the peasants. The exhibition starting point is the first community of coffee growers practicing fair trade, in Mexico, led by Frans van der Hoff Boersma who still lives among them, in great simplicity. The route goes then through several countries (Laos, Haiti, Ethiopia …) and ends in Burma with an ambitious project to replace opium crops with coffee. The photos are all made in the intertropical areas where Malongo and his foundation intervene.
Photographer and writer, Lionel Astruc is the author of many books often devoted to commodity chains around the world.
First reporter-international photographer (Paris Match, Newsweek, National Geographic) Érick Bonnier subsequently founded his own home editing.
Exhibition produced by the Malongo Foundation and presented by the association of Méjan, from July 1 to September 22, 2019, in Croisière.
On the occasion of the exhibition, the work of Frans van der Hoff Boersma, La voie des paysans. D’un commerce équitable à un marché juste, (Actes Sud, “Domaine du possible “) will be available during the Rencontres de la photographie, before its release in bookstores on September 4th.
Coming soon : La voie des paysans. D’un commerce équitable à un marché juste, Frans van der Hoff Boersma, photographs by Lionel Astruc, September 2019
