From the lunar-shaped mountains of Tibesti to the giant granite rocks that look like sculptures shaped by the winds and sand of the Ennedi, the dunes that are moving from the far north to the salt lakes miraculously set in the middle of the hellish Sahara. northern Chad is anything but a monotonous desert vastness.
The men, women and children who have learned over the centuries to survive in this environment both haunting and bitter are the anonymous heroes of the photographs that José Nicolas has taken over the years, from the Chari River on the borders of Sudan, to the palm grove of Faya-Largeau in the Tibesti massif. – Excerpt from Pierre Haski’s preface
“My connection with Chad goes back to childhood. In the early 1960s, with my military father, we landed at Faya-Largeau, capital of northern Chad. I remember a life where time had no hold on us, where I lived fully this freedom with the happiness of innocence. In 1978, a 22-year-old paratrooper, I return to this country to evacuate European citizens, while different factions in Chad clashed violently.
Two years later, with my unit, we camped for four months in the east, in Abeche, then near Lake Chad. I then devoted myself with my camera to the pleasure of curiosity and contemplation. These are my first pictures of Chad. Other visits followed one another until the end of the 1990s. I went there as a photographer for Médecins du Monde (1983) and for the photo agency Sipa. while I continued to cover 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 criss- crossed the desert zones of the country, in search of poetry, connecting with scenes of Spartan life (markets, hospitals, schools, …) and to the multiple faces encountered, photographing free of any constraints. I explored especially at leisure the places neglected by the news. If my travels have always led me beyond the capital, I wanted to gather these images to pay homage to these women and men, proud and worthy, to this forgotten people. – José Nicolas
Tchad (1980-1997) des héros oubliés, photographies de José Nicolas
édition Imogène
128 pages, format 1.3 x 19 x 22 cm, 35€
