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Born in 1902, Pierre Verger was a French photographer who spent much of his professional life taking pictures in Africa and in Brazil.
The Go-Between/Le Messager:
Photographs, 1932-1962 is a collection of his photographs taken in Nigeria,
French West Africa, Brazil, Martinique, the U.S., and several other countries
over a 30-year span. Verger's images include African men in traditional costume
dancing in celebration, Brazilian workmen off-loading a boat by hand, dancers at
Carnival, boys on a Harlem street. Verger saw himself as a kind of liaison
between traditional African cultures and their offshoots in the New World; at
their best, these vibrant photographs give one the sense of how much Africa has
survived, and flourished, in the Americas.
Retraces the adventurous life of photographer Pierre
Verger (1902-1996), a French ethnographer who devoted his life to the study of
the reciprocal cultural influences between Bahia, Brazil and the Benin and
Nigeria regions in Africa. The originality of his work lies in his demonstration
that not only were cultural traditions brought from Africa to Brazil by slaves,
but former slaves who returned to their native continent brought back Brazilian
influences as well. Narrated and presented by Gilberto Gil.