Gérald Bloncourt, photographer and painter, was born 100 years ago

100 years ago, on November 4, 1926, Gérald Bloncourt was born in Bainet. He was a painter, poet and photographer who pursued his career in France while remaining deeply connected to Haiti.

From the "Cinq Glorieuses" to exile

The son of a mother from metropolitan France and a Guadeloupean father, he spent his childhood in Jacmel before his family moved to Port-au-Prince in 1936. In 1944, he took part in founding the Haitian Art Center. Alongside Jacques Stephen Alexis, René Depestre and Gerard Lafontant, he led the "Cinq Glorieuses" uprising, which toppled the Lescot government in 1946. Condemned to death and then spared, he was expelled from the country. After a few months in Martinique, he settled in Paris.

The committed eye

In 1948, he took charge of the photography department at L'Humanité, and later became a freelance reporter for numerous publications, including L'Express and Le Nouvel Observateur. In 1963, he launched Éditions Murales. He began documenting Portuguese emigration in 1966, covered the Carnation Revolution in 1974, and subsequently the Polisario Front war. He produced more than 200,000 photographs.

Return and recognition

He returned to Haiti in 1986, following the fall of the Duvaliers, and in 1998 co-founded the "Committee to Judge Duvalier." He received the Medal of the City of Paris in 2008 and was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor in 2015. He died in Paris on October 29, 2018.