Project supported: Don’t Cry, This is our Land

Edouard Elias bears witness to social and humanitarian crises around the world: wars, exoduses, repression, poverty.

As much concerned with the story collected from the subject as with its perception by the public, he explores all the processes allowing him to create a link other than simply informative around his stories. His photography evolves, initially focused on a “news” practice during the Syrian conflict where he followed the various rebel offensives on the front opposed to Bashar El Assad’s army. Captured by the Islamic State during his fourth report, he will be held hostage for 11 months.

He then covered for the biggest national media various places of crises and fights, such as an immersion with the rescues of refugees in the Mediterranean, the flight of civilian populations around Lake Chad during the abuses of Boko Haram, the hospital of Doctor Mukwege , Nobel Peace Prize 2018 in the Democratic Republic of Congo, closed educational centers for young offenders in France or even recently work on two enemy trenches, face to face, in Dombass, in eastern Ukraine.

His approach then moves towards a slower methodology, where intimacy with his subject creates an immersive practice of his photography, closer to stories in order to not only testify to a context but to emotions. His images have been exhibited, among others, at the Center National des Arts & Métiers, at the Paris City Hall, at the Pont du Gard site, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, at the Liberties Festival in Brussels, at the National Museum of China in Beijing. as part of the Heart & crafts Wonderlab exhibition.

They have also been hosted at the Polka Paris gallery, at the Grand Palais during the Rare Book and Art Object Fair, the Homo Faber event of the Michelangelo Foundation in Venice as well as at the London Craft Week in collaboration with the Hélio’g workshop since 2016. His work on the Foreign Legion as well as his subject on the trench warfare in Ukraine were acquired by the National Museum of the Armies of the Invalids for their photographic background.

Edouard received for his work the Remi Ochlik visa d’or prize at VISA POUR L’IMAGE, the Sergent Vermeille prize, was received in the World Press Photo Masterclass, selected three times for the Bayeux Calvados prize for war correspondents. He is also selected for the large order of the BnF Radioscopie de France.