Jean-Luc Manaud (1948-2015), the “Lord of the desert,” as he was called, died on February 28th. From Chad to Mali, the Sahara is in mourning. Manaud was born there, in the southern Tunisian city of Gafsa, where he lived until he was fifteen. His photographs are imbued with a familiarity with those surroundings. There’s not a trace of “ethnicity” or foreignness. “The world they inhabit is and always has been mine,” he wrote in one of the many books on that theme.
“If you want to know Jean-Luc, look at this pictures,” says his friend François Guenet, a longtime friend of Manaud with whom he founded the Odyssey agency in 1989. “His photographs question. And he nearly sacrificed everything he had for them.” Manaud was a regular contributor to Le Figaro Magazine and Géo, touring the world of guerillas from Eritrea to Cambodia. Starting in the 2000s, back before mixing media was so common, Manaud began painting on Polaroids, writing travel and children’s books combining calligraphy, drawing, cut-outs and photographs. His daughters Johanna, Sarah, Mathilde and Charlotte are working to make all of his work available for us to discover.
Read the full article on the French version of L’Oeil.
Martine Ravache
avec la collaboration de Yves Gellie et de François Guenet
