Guillaume Bonn

BIO

Guillaume Bonn is an award winning documentary photographer who has for the last 25 years reported on conflict, social and environment issues.
He was a contributor to The New York Times and worked at Vanity Fair magazine for 15 years, covering a variety of topics ranging from the conflict in Northern Uganda, the Darfur humanitarian crisis and the ivory trade on the African elephants.
His reporting has brought him to forty countries on the continent.

However, while we all, in some way or another, tell stories, the type Bonn is compelled to tell is the kind ‘the world,’ as he says, ‘is turning away from’ - be that helping break the Darfur crises in the New York Times, exposing the sexual abuse suffered by children in the Democratic Republic of Congo at the hands of UN peacekeepers, or risking his life to uncover the machinations of Africa’s trade in ivory. Be they urgent or quiet, Guillaume Bonn tells stories the world is afraid to hear. They pose real questions and as such demand real answers.

New Yorker writer Jon Lee Anderson describes him " Like an archeologist, who has the urge to seek out and preserve whatever amounts to a legacy of the past in East Africa. The difference is that he takes pictures, and that the past he seeks to record is quite a recent one."

Crucially, Bonn’s work - be it photographing a royal wedding in Jodhpur, a people devastated by the activities of the Lord’s Resistance Army, Paris fashion week, the Oscars – is informed, moulded and inspired by his relationship with Africa.

Bonn loves this Africa, urgently, thoughtfully, and unflinchingly. It sits in or behind or in front of every photograph he takes, images of unrelenting care, of the human and its environment, of a life demanding immediate change.

Harper's Baazar magazine

" It has been his destiny to document the demise of the old ways and the natural environment of the continent that gave him birth. But the human upheaval he spends his life witnessing and recording is also his own. However much Bonn loves Africa, he is becoming inexorably displaced from it. The proof of life that was left behind by his forebears, and others like them, is vanishing quickly " writes Jon Lee Anderson.

Born of third generation Madagascan French immigrants, and having grown up in Kenya, much of Bonn’s work is based in sub-Saharan Africa.

Guillaume is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and is currently working on his 6th book on the theme of Human wildlife conflict in Africa.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2019
From Maputo to Mogadishu, Circle Art Gallery, Nairobi
Dreams and Dystopias, Ismaili Centre, London

2012
Silent Lives, Creative center Foundation, Los Angeles

2009
Le mal d'Afrique, a Journey into old and new Africa. Cosmos gallerie Paris

2008
Le mal d'Afrique, a Journey into old and new Africa, Nairobi national Museum,
Le mal d’Afrique,Candela & Decker gallery, New York. USA
Reflections of Kenya, Ramoma Museum, Nairobi. Kenya

GROUP EXHIBITIONS (sélection)

2021
Africa State of Mind - Hybrid cities/Etat d'Esprit Africain-Villes Hybrides
Les Rencontres de la Photographie ARLES - Arles Photo festival
4th July - 26th September 2021

1% Privilege in a Time of Global inequality
2018
Samek Art Museum - Lewisburg, USA

2017
Chavonnes Battery Museum - Cape Town, South Africa
Photival Photographic Festival - Wellington, New Zealand
Médiathèque du Pays de Sierentz, France
fosfeniLAB - Padua, Italy
University of Virginia—Charlottesville, USA

2016
Rendez-vous • Image - Strasbourg, France
Balkan Photo Festival - Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Gage Gallery at Roosevelt University - Chicago, USA
Magazzini Fotografici - Naples, Italy
Head On Photo Festival - Sydney, Australia
Transphotographiques - Lilles, France
Athens Photo Festival - Athens, Greece
LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph - [Evening projection]
Voies Off :: Arles, France
Uri-Eichen Gallery - Chicago, USA
OBSCURA Festival - George Town, Malaysia
AMURAL Festival - Brasov, Romania
Brown University - Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs
Organ Vida Festival - Zagreb, Croatia
Just Another Photo Festival - Varanasi, India
Addis Foto Fest - Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
The Eye – International Photography Festival Aberystwyth, Wales

2015
Pingyao International Photography Festival -NPingyao, China
East Wing Gallery - Dubai, UAE
Browse Gallery- Berlin, Germany
Fotodoks Festival - Munich, Germany
Lagos Photo (Satellite Exhibit) Lagos, Nigeria
Lishui International Photography Festival- Lishui, China
International Photography Festival GuatePhoto - Guatemala City, Guatemala

EverydayAfrica

2017
The Square / Uganda
Press Photo Awards, Kampala, Uganda Alliance Francaise, Nairobi, Kenya.

2016
AddisFotoFest, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Just Another Photo Festival, Delhi, India, October 2015 + 2016
FotoIstanbul, Istanbul, Turkey, October 2015 + 2016
BredaPhoto, Breda, The Netherlands, September-October 2016
OBSCURA Festival of the Photograph, George Town, Malaysia, August 2016
LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph, Charlottesville, USA, June 2016.

2015
Rencontres de Fes,Morocco
Channels: Media, Culture, and Representation, Delaware County Community College.
Viral: Photography in the Age of Social Media, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge University.

2014
Photoville, Brooklyn, NY

Mosquito Coast
2017
Art Paris art fair, Grand Palais, Paris, A gallerie

AWARDS

2018
American Photography winner (35)

2015
Nominated to le Prix Pictet

2014
Grant from the Pulitzer centre for crisis reporting. Nominated to le Prix Pictet

2012
Winner POPCAP12 for African Contemporary Photography - Nominated to le Prix Pictet

2007
PDN Photo Annual, USA

BOOKS

Monographs
Addis Ababa. Be-Poles Publishing, France. 2017
Mosquito Coast, Travels from Maputo to Mogadishu. Hatje Cantz, Germany, p. 2015
Le Mal d’Afrique, a Journey into old & new Africa. Empire Publishing, USA, p. 2006
Peter Beard,Scrapbooks from Africa & beyond + DVD. Empire Publishing, USA, p. 2006
Kenya December 2002, on the Kenyan elections, Camerapix Publishing, Kenya, p 2002

Collective work
Africa State of Mind - Contemporary Photography reimagines a Continent by Ekow Eshun - published 2020 by thames and Hudson
Everyday Africa, Kehrer Publishing, Germany, p 2017
1% Privilege in a Time of Global inequality, Hatje Cantz,Germany, p 2016
Nairobi 24 Editor: Guillaume Bonn & Nick Ysenburg, 8 Nairobi photographers and writers present a celebration of their city. Kwani Publishing, Kenya, p 2010

Guest lectures

2020
Royal Geographical Society London, with curator Rozemin Keshvani discuss Bonn’s photo essay on East Africa’s disappearing past, barely recognisable but through the echoes of architectural ruins and fragile landscapes.

2019
Royal Geographical Society with curator Rozemin Keshvani on how to consider reframing and re-contextualising post colonial histories through photography.

2017
Frontline club London with Jon Lee Anderson - Mosquito Coast

2008
Cork-Ireland travel book festival – Mal d’Afrique

2007
Hay on Wye literary book festival - Mal d’Afrique

2006
Frontline club London on my book Mal d’Afrique
Half King in NYC - Mal d’Afrique

Films: (director)

2020
The Era of Man - on conservationist Tony Fitzjohn and his work in Mkomazi national Park
Writing Fidel - on Author and Journalist Jon Lee Anderson writing his latest film on Fidel Castro

2001
The desert School - French Foreign Legion – Djibouti – short film for CNN inside Africa.
The Kongo on the legendary Erytrean rebel attire ‘’Kongo’’shoe that helped win the revolution - short film for CNN inside Africa

1999
A Nomadic Dilemma”, United NationsDevelopment Program Somali 1999, a 15minutes documentary on natural disaster prevention in north east Somalia

1998/2006
Peter Beard Scrapbooks from Africa and Beyond, a 52 minutes film produced by French channel Canal+ on American Artist/photographer Peter Beard.
Shown on TV stations worldwide.
Sundance festival in 2006 with release of DVD.

Interviews, reviews and articles (selection)
Harpers Bazaar (uk), Photo (France), Foto8 (Uk), The East African newspaper (Kenya), Liberation (France), Le Figaro (France), Telerama (France), Les Inrockuptibles (France), Le Nouvel Observateur, (France) l'Express (France), The New Yorker (USA), Books (France), Vanity Fair (USA), Paris Match (France), Wall Street Journal Magazine (USA)

Editorial (selection)
Vanity Fair Magazine (USA/UK) The New York Times Magazine (USA), The International Herald Tribune (USA), The Guardian Magazine (UK), The Guardian (UK), The Telegraph Magazine (UK), The New York Times (USA), TIME (USA), NEWSWEEK (USA), Monocle (UK), Departures (USA), Conde Nast Traveler (USA), Outside (USA) Tatler (UK), Harpers Bazaar (UK), Granta (UK), The Wall Street Journal magazine (USA), New York times Style T-Magazine (USA), The Sunday Times magazine (UK), The London Times (UK), The Sunday Independent magazine (UK),