Une vie en afrique 1894-1939 / A Life in Africa 1894-1939: Henri Gaden: Officier et photographe / Henri Gaden: Officer and Photographer

A keen amateur photographer, Gaden was inseparable from his camera during the forty years of his career as a military officer and administrator in Africa. His photographs form a unique pictorial record of everyday life at French colonial and military outposts--and for local communities and peoples. With camera in hand, Gaden knew how to stand witness and capture life scenes of women and men--offering an ambiance, an exchange, even a degree of complicity between the administrator and his photographic subject, be it a prestigious defeated figure like Samory Touré or an ordinary encounter in a village, from Chad to the French Soudan, between 1894 and 1939.