In the eye of Pierrot Men in Madagascar

For almost 50 years and his rear base in Fianarantsoa where he set up his studio and one of his galleries, Pierrot Men has been wandering his gaze, camera slung over his shoulder, into the most remote corners of Madagascar. Known as the white wolf over there, the one who initially intended for painting, is today a reference that inspires the entire young generation of Malagasy photographers, for a look from the inside…

Born in 1954, Chan Hong Men Pierrot, known as Pierrot Men, saw his career as a photographic artist take off after his first international distinction, in 1994 with the Leica Prize in the “Mother Jones” Competition in San Francisco. Since then, honors and exhibitions have followed one another on the African continent, as in the rest of the world: from Quai Branly in Paris, to China via the Bamako Biennale or the United States.

For this claimed disciple of the great portraitists of African studios like Seydou Keïta or Malick Sidibé, this international career is a golden opportunity to show his country but above all its people, whose social and cultural reality he patiently illustrates. Because in the eye of Pierrot Men, the workers in the shadows, coal burners, brick makers or fishermen are in the light, sometimes immersed in a morning or twilight mist, frail silhouettes in a setting of hills, baobabs or breathtaking shores the breath.

The dream, the childhood, the immense dignity of a people standing, busy working and living, in a country undermined by poverty, this is what we find in the images of Pierrot Men. Images which made many want to go to the island in the Indian Ocean and which above all offer another perspective on the inhabitants of the countryside of Madagascar.

From the Highlands, in the south-central part of the country, let us follow the gaze of this child of Madagascar, who has become in his own way an ambassador, a sensitive archivist of the island.

A report in Madagascar by Raphaëlle Constant.

Learn more :

– On the work of Pierrot Men

– Pierrot Men has a gallery in Fianarantsoa and another in Antananarivo (Tana water Front, Module N°2)

– On the numerous publications by Pierrot Men, including “Men and Trees” Éditions Carambole 2015 or “Portraits of Insurgents, Madagascar 1947”, text by Jean-Luc Raharimanana, Éditions Vents d'ailleurs, 2011.

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