|
|
 |
|
1902 |
Pierre Edouard Léopold Verger is born on November 4
in Paris as the second of three sons in a Belgian-German family. |
|
 |
1909-20 |
Attends the Lycée Janson de Sailly in Paris. Technical
studies at the École Bréguet, later expelled
because of misconduct. |
1920 |
Enters the family business, a printing works run by three of
his uncles following his father’s death in 1915; after
concluding his military service, leads the life of a young,
affluent dandy and vacations in Deauville. |
1932-33 |
His mother dies; he begins making photographs in Corsica, together
with the photographer Pierre Boucher; tours the USSR on the
occasion of the 15th anniversary of the October Revolution;
travels to Tahiti and the small Easter Island. |
|
1934 |
Returns to Paris; his photographs appear in the South Sea exhibition
at the Museum of Ethnography (today Musée de l'Homme);
meets academic personalities such as Georges-Henri Rivière,
Marcel Griaule, Germaine Dieterlen, Michel Leiris, and Alfred
Métraux, later his companion. Joins the "Prévert
Group;" travels around the world, commissioned by the
magazine "Paris Soir" : USA, Japan, China, the Philippines,
Singapore, Colombo, and Djibouti; publishes in London’s
"Daily Mirror" ; founds the Paris-based agency for
independent photographers, "Alliance Photo", together
with Pierre Boucher, René Zuber, Émeric Féher,
Denise Bellon, and later Robert Capa. |
|
 |
1935 |
Tours Europe by bicycle; taken into custody at the outbreak
of the Spanish Civil War, suspected of being a German spy;
in Paris he begins what becomes a more than 30-year-long collaboration
with the publisher Paul Hartmann; travels to Black Africa
via Algeria; sets off into the Sahara with a camel expedition
to visit the Tuareg people in Adrar of Ifora. |
1936 |
Further trips: Kidal, Timbuktu, Mopti, San, Ségou, Bamako,
Ouahigouya, Togo and Dahomey (today Benin) in the regions
of the Sombas and Tanguiétas; Dosso (Niger); returns
by bus to Algiers via Tamanrasset; in Paris he converts an
attic space into his own private photography studio; travels
by sea to the Caribbean; in Santo Domingo he experiences the
restrictions on taking photographs under the regime of dictator
Trujillo; from Havanna he travels to Mexico City; visits various
places of worship in Teotihuacán, Xochimilco, Oaxaca,
Tehuantepec and Yucatán; tours USA by bus. |
1937 |
Photographs the Paris World’s Fair Exhibition; represented
in the Museum of Modern Art (New York) exhibition "Photography
1839-1937;" commissioned by "Alliance Photo"
to document the Chinese-Japanese War; travels to China with
the Trans-Siberian Express; in Manila’s northern region,
Baguio, he lives with headhunter tribes. |
1938 |
Travels to Lai Chan in French Indochina along the "Black
River," with a stopover in the imperial city of Hué,
where he photographs the powerless emperor Bao-Dai; spends
a month in Cambodia; discovers the temple of Angkor; in Paris
he receives his draft notice from the French army; following
the demobilization, the magazine "Paris Match" sends
him to the Vatican. |
1939 |
Stays 4 months in Mexico City; photographs Leo Trotzki thanks
to the intervention of friends of the Prévert Circle
and "Groupe Octobre;" robbed in the train bound
for Guatemala; travels via Antigua to the Panama Canal; following
the outbreak of war in Europe, embarks on an odyssey through
South America; journeys from Rio to Senegal. |
1940-41 |
Dakar is immediately militarized; he returns to South America
via Casamance, Guinea-Bissau, and the Cape Verde islands;
experiences financial difficulties in Buenos Aires; completes
underpaid pieces for the newspapers "El Mundo Argentino"
and "Argentina Libre"; lives with a group of gypsies |
1942-43 |
Crosses Bolivia; in July: arrives in Peru; works as a photographer
at the National Museum in Lima; following alternating periods
of residency in Lima and Cuzco, travels the region of the
Quechua and Aymara Indians in the high plateaus. |
1944-45 |
Termination of his position as photographer at the National
Museum in Lima; the Rubber Development Corporation commissions
him to photograph the extraction of latex in Amazonian regions
of Peru; suffers a severe case of malaria in Lima. |
1946 |
Travels from Peru via Bolivia to São Paulo; befriends
the ethnologist Roger Bastide, who encourages him to acquaint
himself with African Brazil; In Rio, through the help of the
weekly periodical "O Cruzeiro", he receives a residency
permit for an extended period entitling him to work as a photographer;
arrives in the port of Salvador da Bahia; befriends the writer
Jorge Amado, the singer Dorival Caymmi, the humanities scholar
Vivaldo Costa Lima, the sculptor Mário Cravo Júnior,
the Argentinean painter Carybé, the collector Mirabeau
Sampáio; his photojournalism focuses on traditional
festivals, "candomblés," folk artists and
poets |
1947-48 |
The École Française d'Afrique in Dakar (Senegal)
offers him a yearlong grant; accompanies Alfred Métraux
to Dutch Guyana; they meet again in Haiti, where he lives
in the Centre d'Art for the Support of Haitian Folk Artists;
researches the origins of voodoo in Dahomey; departs for Dakar,
where he studies the interplay of African cults on both sides
of the Atlantic. |
1949-50 |
Discovers in Tibúrcio dos Santos, in Ouidah (Dahomey),
documents on the slave trade; establishes the starting point
for 17 years of research on relationships between the Golf
of Benin and Bahia de Todos os Santos, and on the Brazilian
influence, particularly in West Africa; collaborates with
Austrian artist Susanne Wenger, who lives in Nigeria. |
|
1951-52 |
Commissioned by Paul Hartmann to complete a photo-reportage
on the Belgian Congo; takes an upriver steamship cruise on
the Congo River from Leopoldville to Stanleyville; forges
a path into the Ituri forests; photographs in Rwanda the Watusi
people; visits the Katanga mines. |
|
 |
1953-56 |
The initiation of Pierre Verger in Ketou, where he receives
the name "Fatumbi" and the title of "Babalaô"
(The Father of Secrets), allowing him access to the orally
passed-on wisdom of the Yorubá; on the island of Gorée
he writes his M.A. study for the Institut Français
d'Afrique Noire (IFAN) in Dakar, and for Paul Hartmann the
book "Dieux d'Afrique"; returns to Bahia. |
1957 |
Travels to Cuba to photograph Ernest Hemingway for "O
Cruzeiro"; investigates the entire island; meets Lydia
Cabrera, a Cuban Santería-cult expert; together with
Cabrera and Alfred Métraux, participates in "Vodun"
ceremonies; travels through Mexico and Brazil. |
1962 |
Appointed member of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
(CNRS) in France, where he becomes director of research in
January 1972. |
1966 |
Obtains his Ph.D. at the Sorbonne in Paris with a doctoral
thesis on the black slave trade between the Golf of Benin
and Bahia from the 17th to 19th century. |
1968 |
With the support of the French ambassador to Benin, the old
Portuguese fort in Ouidah is made into a museum dedicated
to the Brazilian Diaspora. |
|
1973 |
The shooting of the TV-documentary "The Brazilians of
Africa and the Africans of Brazil", with the assistance
of his friend Balbino Daniel de Paula. |
|
 |
1974 |
Honorary professorship at the Universidade Federal da Bahia,
which in the future allows him a modest existence. |
1977 |
After many previous stays in Nigeria, the University of Ifé
offers him a visiting professorship, which he ends three years
later. |
1979 |
Returns permanently to Bahia; makes contact with the Editora
Corrupio publishing house, which prints a series of his photography
books. |
|
1988 |
March 28: the founding of Fundação Pierre Verger,
today situated in the house purchased in 1960 near Vila América
in Salvador. |
|
 |
1989 |
In France he gives lectures on medicinal plants of the Yorubá,
together with French ethnobotanist Ming Anthony, with whom
he gives a lecture on memory-inducing plants in 1993 in Heidelberg. |
|
1993 |
February: travels to Benin for the "1st Festival of Vodoun
Culture" and the reopening of the History Museum in Ouidah;
The exhibition "Le Messager: photographies 1932-1962"
at the Musée de l'Élysée in Lausanne,
later shown in Paris at the Musée National des Arts
Africains et Océaniens. |
|
|
1994-95 |
Last trip to Europe, with stopovers in Paris and London, where
he participates in a weeklong festival honoring artists and
intellectuals from Bahia; when overexertion from traveling
causes his health to worsen, he flies back to Salvador in
late July; in São Paulo his last work, "Ewé,
o uso das plantas na Sociedade Iorubá", is publised
by Editora Schwarcz |
1996 |
Editions Revue Noire in Paris publishes a new
edition of his favorite book, "Dieux d'Afrique";
gives his last interview with Gilberto Gil, a few days before
his death on February 11.
>> Print version |
|
|
|
|
