Presentation
Jean-François LAGROT
France
Photographs
“Forty years of traveling have taught me to feel at home on the other side of the world, to live on nothing, to revere people and the simple life, their customs and their pride, their desire to remain what they have always been… My counter reads 100, one hundred countries crossed, but I still have more under my belt! Traveling to the ends of the earth for stories now captured in images… powerful ones, preferably!
An addiction, a perpetual quest, like the movement I love above all else!” Jean-François LAGROT writes most of the texts that accompany his photo reports. He has been published in most of the major magazines, from Stern to the Sunday Times, including GEO and Paris Match.
Exposition
Almost extinct in the 1990s, the Pirarucu (Arapaima gigas) is the largest freshwater fish in South America and one of the largest in the world. This prehistoric fish can weigh up to 200 kg and measure up to 3 meters. This little-known giant is now fully protected throughout the year in the Brazilian state of Amazonas, but it can be fished by a few communities for three weeks a year in December. Thanks to a conservation project set up by the Mamiraua Institute on the banks of the Amazon, the Pirarucu population has grown from 1,500 to 170,000 in 20 years! Today, for a few fishing communities, the Pirarucu is a source of income. Each year, they obtain a state permit to fish a quota of Pirarucu.
