“Exchanging glances with a huge monkey is a unique experience that rarely leaves one indifferent. A strange feeling overwhelms you: is there more to his glance than meets the eye? What unfathomable thoughts are hiding behind this surprisingly human face?”
Having spent years photographing apes, Sébastien Meys and Florence Perroux have sought to help us discover this most impressive, but also the most sensitive, of our ape-like cousins: the gorilla.
Each of these gentle giants has its own temperament and history. Meys and Perroux treat them like individuals, and the gorillas reveal the particularities of their species. Threatening. Dangerous. Aggressive. These violent terms commonly associated with gorillas reveal our profound ignorance of these imposing but reserved primates. Altruism, empathy, laughter, the use of tools: these are much more accurate ways to describe them. Between Homo and Gorilla there is little difference in nature, only in shape and complexity.
The majority of these photos were taken in captivity or in the wild in Rwanda.
Gorilles, portraits intimes
Florence Perroux and Sébastien Meys
Editions Le Pommier
144 pages, 243 x 320 mm
29 €
ISBN : 978-2-7465-0646-6
