FINALIST OF THE 2024 LUCIE PHOTO BOOK PRIZE
"An epic new book... the photographs, often in jarring juxtaposition, underscore the cruel bargain of Western 'progress'-and the paradoxical damage brought on by a half century of conservation and preservation efforts." -David Friend, Vanity Fair
A groundbreaking investigation into wildlife conservation, environmental transformation, and efforts to preserve Africa's natural wilderness by French-Madagascan documentary photographer Guillaume Bonn.
Paradise Inc. offers an unvarnished glimpse into the realities of Africa's ecosystems and our collective future, as the disruptions of climate change, economic expansion, and environmental efforts reshape the world before our eyes.
For decades, Bonn has told the stories that the world is afraid to hear, championing the silenced and refusing to turn away from the truth. Paradise Inc. is the culmination of twenty years dedicated to documenting the last days of Africa's vast natural landscapes, where countless expeditions have taken the photographer deep across nearly every country on the continent. Far from tired stereotypes, "greenwashing" efforts, and ready-made solutions, Paradise Inc. shines an unblinking light onto the paradoxes, consequences, and truths that lurk in plain sight behind the environmental "paradise" in Africa.
Featuring an introduction by world-renowned journalist Jon Lee Anderson and foreword by founder of Across Maasai Land Initiative and Maasai elder Ezekiel Ole Katato, Paradise Inc. continues the work Bonn began as a player in the Africa State of Mind project (Thames & Hudson, 2020), now presented in its entirety.
While beautifully and poignantly illustrated, Paradise Inc. is more than a visual journey. Nostalgic and critical, it is declaration of the photographer's love for Africa-which Jon Lee Anderson (The New Yorker) calls his "inescapable muse"-an expression of his fear that it might one day disappear, and an impassioned call to action. In this latest work, Bonn defies the cliches of a wildlife wonderland that haunt the collective imagination, instead asking uncompromising questions and inviting us to strive for sustainable solutions together.
Born in Madagascar and raised in the Comoros Islands, Djibouti, and
Kenya, Bonn brings a unique perspective rooted in his French and
Malagasy heritage and diverse upbringing, exploring the idea of
"Africanness" in his work. It is through this intimate duality that Paradise Inc. delivers its urgent critique, unveils nuances, and captures the thrill of being in the wild.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
"In a world saturated with images-where beauty is too often divorced from meaning and atrocity reduced to content-Paradise Inc. by Guillaume Bonn offers something far rarer: a work of moral clarity, radical honesty, and necessary discomfort. At once elegy and indictment, memoir and investigation, it is a searing visual and textual reckoning with colonial legacies, environmental collapse, and the politics of representation." -Alessia Glaviano, Vogue
"The time has come to face the facts, as east Africa's age-old natural landscapes and wildlife habitats inexorably disappear. Paradise Inc. is therefore a requiem, and perhaps even an epitaph, but it is also a personal plea by Guillaume for the book's readers to shake off their illusions and to see things as they really are, before it really is too late."-Jon Lee Anderson, The Gentlemen's Journal
"Guillaume Bonn's photographs, part of a 20-year project to document the growing clash between animals and humans in Kenya, Somalia, Botswana and South Africa, tell a different story."-Steve Bloomfield, The Observer
"For three decades, photographer Guillaume Bonn has traversed East Africa, documenting how civilization's quintuple threats of modernity, development, population growth, armed conflict, and climate change have imperiled the region's wildlife, habitats, and human communities [...] The result is an epic new book, Paradise Inc. [...] The photographs, often in jarring juxtaposition, underscore the cruel bargain of Western 'progress'-and the paradoxical damage brought on by a half century of conservation and preservation efforts." -David Friend, Vanity Fair
"[...] Photojournalist Guillaume Bonn's haunting images expose the dark side of Africa's wildlife havens, which are increasingly falling victim to unchecked industrialism [...] Bonn's images expose the failure of our conservation model-one that isolates wildlife instead of integrating it."-Elena Clavarino, Air Mail
"There may be a cluster of Masai giraffes standing among acacia trees in the long grass of the Maasai Mara National Reserve on the cover, but don't be mistaken by thinking Guillaume Bonn's Paradise Inc. is a wildlife photography book. A photojournalist, whose hard-hitting photographic stories have appeared regularly in The New York Times and Vanity Fair, Bonn presents an elegiac, highly critical document of the document of the decline of the great East African Wilderness."-Graeme Green,Travel Africa
"[T]rue to its promise, the book is filled with wonderful images of wildlife juxtaposed with urban decay, poverty, soldiers, thrilling landscapes, evidence of complicated and confusing politics. A great many of the images are both beautiful and troubling, and the text lays out some of the issues. [...] the overall effect is convincing."-W. Scott Olsen, FRAMES
"(Guillaume Bonn's) images combine beauty with harsh reality, raising hte question of how economic expansion, population growth and urbanisation can be reconciled with the fates of indigenous peoples, animals and ecological diversity." -Leica Fotographie International
"This is a book I have been waiting to read, and the author is the person I have been longing to talk to. Guillaume, you raise very pertinent issues that are not new to the world but rather have been ignored by the world." -Ezekiel Ole Katato, Maasai elder and culturalist, from the foreword
Sprache
Verlagsort
Produkt-Hinweis
Illustrationen
Maße
Höhe: 274 mm
Breite: 215 mm
Dicke: 25 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-2-490952-53-3 (9782490952533)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Guillaume Bonn is a documentary photographer with over 20 years of experience capturing the complexities of conflicts, social issues, and environmental challenges across Africa. A contributor to publications such as The New York Times and Vanity Fair and a current fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in London, Bonn has authored five books, including Mosquito Coast: Travels from Maputo to Mogadishu, Le Mal d'Afrique: A Journey into Old and New Africa, and Peter Beard: Scrapbooks from Africa and Beyond. His work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, earning him accolades such as The CAP Prize for Contemporary African Photography, the American Photography prize, PDN Photo prize, a Pulitzer grant, and nominations for the Pictet Prize.
Jon Lee Anderson is an American author and journalist who began his career in the early 1980s, reporting on Central America's civil wars. He has reported around the world as a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1998 and has also profiled a number of international public figures, including Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Augusto Pinochet, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and King Juan Carlos. One of the most respected American journalists of his generation, Anderson is also the author of a biography on the iconic Marxist revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara, as well as several other books. He is currently writing biography of Fidel Castro. He resides in Dorset, England, with his wife and three children.
Ezekiel Ole Katato is a Maasai elder and culturalist working to secure the future of the Kenyan environment, wildlife, and Maasai generations to come. For three decades, he has supported the education of Maasai girls, promoting and facilitating access to stable and long-term schooling. He is also dedicated to establishing a peaceful coexistence between the Maasai and their elephant neighbors, securing and protecting 1.2 million hectares of land that not only protects the elephants and the environment, but also generates direct and sustainable income to rural villagers. Ole Katato conceptualized managed "Walking with the Maasai," a six-day walking expedition through Maasai land following the footsteps of Joseph Thomson, the first European explorer to cross Maasai land in 1883. Women, girls, and youth groups have been supported through these walks.
