This gorgeous book highlights seventy works from an important private collection built over more than four decades with discipline, curiosity, and passion.

It is one of the finest private collections of African art from West and Central Africa, through South Africa and Madagascar. Conceived around four main themes—Governance and transmission, Protection and caring, Coming together (celebrating, partying, judging and praising), Serving and beautifying—this selection offers a capacious general introduction to the topic of African art and further our understanding of the artworks’ source cultures. The beautiful photographs of the seventy works in the first part of the publication are followed by a whole chapter dedicated to some important avant-garde photography masterpieces showing the narrow relationship between this movement and nine fascinating African art works belonging to the collection. The objects are shown side by side with renown works from Alfred Stieglitz, Man Ray, Lajos Kassák, Hannah Höch, Erwin Blumenfeld, Maurice Tabard, Karl Blossfeldt and Robert Doisneau.

Striking a balance between often published and lesser-known masterpieces from the collection, the present volume unveils to the public a selection of seven contemporary artistsphotographers (Jean Marc Tingaud, Louis Tirilly, Nicolas Bruant, Roger Ballen, Groupe Street Collodion Art, Coco Fronsac, and Frédéric Vidal) who have been asked to represent in a contemporary and personal style for the first time nine renowned works.