Burundi, three years after the assassination of the democratically elected president, and the subsequent racial hatred and violence, Alexis Cordesse photographs a country torn apart, the refugee camps, the vestiges of terror. His images are combined with testimonies gathered in situ, as justice waits to be done.
War photography and reportage
4 films
I hope to stay unemployed as a war photographer till the end of my life.
For the reporter photographers, there were the blessed years when photographs almost replaced text in the printed press. In the pages of Vu, Life, Match, Stern... the weight of words and the impact of photographs balanced out. Prior to this golden age, photographic technique could not capture "the moment". The end of the heyday of print reportage came with TV news, then digital flow... But still today, photographers in search of meaning offer a vision of war and the world that forces us to "unplug", to ask ourselves questions, and to reflect...
Films on the theme
Alexis Cordesse | Kabul, a Weary War
In Afghanistan in the early 1990s, after the Russian occupation ended, militias competed for power. Four years of fierce clashes. Alexis Cordesse arrived in Kabul in early 1995, when the city was under siege. His images don't show the fighting but the life of the besieged population. Traces of face-offs and a lasting war. His photographs are brought to life by sound recordings captured at the time.
13’
Visually narrating Rwanda's path from genocide to healing.
Alexis Cordesse | Rwanda, one genocide later
Rwanda, April 1996. Precisely two years after the genocide, photo-reporter Alexis Cordesse visits the massacre sites. He photographs the commemorations, the civilians who heal the wounds, certain places left untouched since 1994. He records the traces of violence, of memory coming together. His photographs resonate with the archives of Rwandan radio, which at the time of the genocide urged racial hatred and violence.
11’
Foča's story told in images, a testament to survival and memory.
Alexis Cordesse | Foča, Absolut Serbia
In 1997, Alexis Cordesse photographed the town of Foča in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Five years previously it had been seized by Serbian nationalists. The siege lasted three months; appalling violence was visited on the Muslim and Croat populations. By the time the photographer came, the town had changed its name and the torturers were free. He recorded the traces of atrocities, linking them with testimonies he captured at the scene and accompanied them with extracts from indictments announced by the International Criminal Court.
