PIERRE DE VALLOMBREUSE
Presentation
Pierre de Vallombreuse
Member of the Société des Explorateurs Français
Winner of the International Planète Albert Kahn Prize, 2017
Member of the Committee of the Rencontres Photographiques des Amis du Musée Albert-Kahn
Born in Bayonne in 1962, Pierre de Vallombreuse felt, from an early age, the desire to bear witness to his time, influenced by Joseph Kessel, a close friend of his parents. In 1984, he entered the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris with the intention of pursuing a career as a press illustrator.
The following year, a journey to Borneo changed the course of his life when he encountered some of the last nomads of the jungle: the Punan people. From a sedentary artist, he became a nomadic witness, and photography became his chosen form of expression. He spent long periods in the jungles of the Philippines alongside the Palawan people, living with them for more than four years in total.
The first part of his work on the Palawan people was presented in 1988 at the prestigious photography festival Les Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie d’Arles. Since 1986, he has tirelessly documented the lives of Indigenous peoples across five continents. He has built a unique photographic archive covering 42 communities in constant evolution, paying tribute to the precious diversity of the world.
Each people highlights the many different ways human societies respond to the living conditions imposed by nature and history. The reading of Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Tristes Tropiques helped shape his path.
Like the anthropologist, Pierre de Vallombreuse reveals the complex realities of their ways of life and fights for the respect and fair representation of these vulnerable populations, whose heritage is vital to us all. These communities are too often the first victims of genocide, wars, racist ideologies, economic predation, food shortages, ecological disasters and what Edgar Morin calls “disintegrating integration”.
These crucial issues, far from being limited to distant or isolated territories, concern humanity as a whole. His work is a cry of alarm.
His work is structured around major long-term projects developed over several years, including Peuples, Hommes Racines, Souveraines, Les Badjaos, une disparition silencieuse, La Vallée, and Kairos Love à Portland. Their purpose is to alert the public to the fate of these peoples. Far from the outdated and simplistic exoticism often associated with them, the reality he reveals through photography is very different: a struggle for survival.
He was Secretary General of the Association Anthropologie et Photographie at Paris VII University, founded by Edgar Morin, Emmanuel Garrigues and Jean Malaurie.
He has published 15 books and exhibited his work in festivals, museums and galleries such as Les Rencontres Internationales d’Arles, Visa pour l’Image, the Festival Photo La Gacilly, the Musée de l’Homme, the Musée du Quai Branly, the Musée des Confluences in Lyon, the Musée Albert-Kahn in Boulogne, the Ethnographic Museum of La Paz, the National Museum of the Philippines, and many others.
He regularly collaborates with major international magazines such as Newsweek, El País, La Stampa, Le Monde, GEO, Terre Sauvage, Figaro Magazine, L’Œil de la Photographie, Camera International, and others.
