(1902-1992)
Painter, ethnographer and photographer, Jean Besancenot created from 1934 numerous stays in Morocco, where he carried out ethnographic surveys on behalf of the French protectorate. His work mainly focuses on costumes, ornaments and jewelry of Arab communities, Jews and Amazighs.
Former student of the National School of Decorative Arts in Paris, he gave an essential place to the aesthetic value of the cultures observed. This sensitivity is reflected in his reference works, Moroccan costumes (1942) and Arab and Berber jewelry from Morocco (1953), where texts, drawings and watercolors complement each other to document traditional know-how. Gradually, his field investigations led him to turn to photography, perceived as both a scientific tool and an artistic medium, in the spirit of Paul Rivet or Marcel Mauss. Faithful to the systemic approach of the Musée de l’Homme with which he collaborated, Besancenot developed rich visual documentation of more than 2 000 images annotated and methodically classified according to regions and populations. His archives and negatives are now kept at the Arab World Institute., while his photographs have joined institutions such as the Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac, the MAHJ, the Berber Museum of Marrakech and the Museum of Photography of Marrakech.
“I wanted to prove that scientists […] often neglect aspects of traditional arts that contain very important aesthetic value. I wanted to restore this value. » *
* (Dominique Carré, “Jean Besancenot, ethno-photographer and photo-ethnographer », in Hannah Assouline and Dominique Carré, Jews of Morocco : photographs by Jean Besancenot, 1934-1937, Paris, MAHJ, 2020, p. 14-20)