Guillaume Bonn: Mosquito Coast. Travels from Maputo to Mogadishu

In his documentary work, photographer Guillaume Bonn (born in Madagascar) has been recording social and political events in Congo, Rwanda, Tanzania, or Somalia for publications such as the New York Times, Guardian Magazine, and Vanity Fair. For the artist, who lives in Paris, Nairobi, and London, his East African home has become today’s Mosquito Coast : much the same as during the colonial era in the region in the eastern Caribbean called the Miskito or Mosquito Coast after its indigenous people, eastern Africa is currently experiencing a transformation-mosquito- and malaria-ridden, marked by the traces of dictatorship and war, at the mercy of the consumption and commerce of the Western world. Guillaume Bonn’s photographs present the old Africa in its unrelentingly vibrant native culture in the midst of modern skyscrapers, new highways, and what are purported to be technical improvements. I cannot push away this feeling of sadness I have in seeing all these changes. My antidote has been to document the old Africa struggling to survive and the new one that is emerging. Guillaume Bonn