beaux livres : photo, architecture, art

Cameroon, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Algeria… In this deeply personal work, Jean-Christophe Béchet looks back thirty-five years on his first steps as a young photographer. This long-term work (three years of immersion), which he affectionately calls “my African years”, should have been his first book, but his personal and photographic life decided otherwise.

Few images circulated, the majority having remained in archive boxes all these years. Today, he has reworked his selection, seeking to find a new rhythm. He notes: “As we age, images change their status, some memories fade, others take over, some images take on greater force, others become repetitive and a little ‘cliché’. You have to be able to navigate between a kind of nostalgia (inevitable, since photography is also the art of the past) and a desire to build a contemporary work with photographs that are more than 35 years old”.

Most of the territories featured in African Memories are no longer accessible to French or European visitors. Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, the countries that welcomed him so warmly with his backpack, are now closed places. This book is a vibrant tribute to Africa from a passionate photographer.

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