Pierre Vanneste

During four consecutive years, I met different sailors, on several fishing areas in the East Atlantic and Mediterranean. Through these encounters, testimonials and boardings on different types of boats, I wanted to draw a portrait of a universe, a world which, in my opinion, best depicts the relationship that Man has today with his environment.

DREMMWEL is a "documentary experience", a photographic project combining real and virtual which offers a poetic and critical view of fishing and the exploitation of fish species. It puts into perspective our modes of production and consumption; our relationship to the world and to living things.

With the doubling of the world's population since 1960 and changes in dietary behaviour, the amount of fish extracted from the oceans for human consumption has increased dramatically to reach more than 171 million tonnes in 2017. In order to supply the mass market, boats sail through different fishing areas depending on the products they are targeting. In its modern industrial version, fishing primarily targets the commercial species best valued on the international market, thus weakening certain layers of the food chain. While in Europe, they see the sea emptying, endangering their activity, in West Africa, this same scarcity of resources leads many fishermen to emigrate.

DREMMWEL is both a connected book with augmented content, published by Yellow Now Editions in partnership with Blinkl, and an exhibition project with augmented content.

"Yonoo Yokkute" (the way to emergence in Wolof) is a documentary project conducted since 2017, in Senegal in the communes of Bargny and Sendou.

Located 35 km from the capital Dakar, the inhabitants of these two communes live mainly from fishing, agriculture and animal farming. But since several years, their living space has been the subject of an urban redevelopment whose vocation is to contribute to the opening up of the capital and the emergence of the country. Paradoxically, the inhabitants see their local economy and social organisation undermined by the metamorphosis of their municipalities into industrial zones and the environmental consequences of global warming.

Geographically landlocked by coastal erosion, the installation of a cement factory in 1948; the construction of a coal-fired power station in 2008; the arrival of an urban development pole for the upper classes of Dakar and foreign investors under construction since 2014, and the construction of a mineral and bulk carrier port since the end of 2017, the Lebous villages of Bargny and Sendou seem to become the vast construction site of worlds that are dying.

This series looks at our relationship to the world and our environment. It translates into images the voices of men and women drowned in the fog of their past and future uncertainties, frozen in the face of the inconsistencies of our society.

"Yonoo Yokkute" is a photo report in progress from the web documentary "Bargny, the real face of economic emergence", co-directed with the journalist Laurence Grun.