Fishing communities endangered
My maternal family has lived around the sea, my great-grandmother sold fish in the street, like African women in fishing areas. Her daughter, my grandmother, wrote poems to the sea when her husband left for months on merchant or fishing boats. My mother misses the ocean when she is not in a coastal city. I have not grown up in a town close to the sea, but I look for tranquility in it. This family influence has an impact; I have always been interested in everything surrounding the sea, especially its communities. On my first trips to the African continent, I was fascinated to walk through the ports and the markets near them, sit with a fisherman, and see the similarities between his life and my great-grandmother's.
Thanks to those talks in ports and markets, I have gradually discovered how the traditional fishing communities of the African continent are disappearing, in most cases due to external agents, whether it is the expansion of a deep water port, the pollution, the impact of industry or international fishing treaties. Over the last few years, I have been collecting testimonies and photographing the effect of these external agents. This project is a long-term documentary which is still under construction. Nevertheless, here is a small sample of the construction of a project simmering with love.
