1883-1944
In winter 1924, Casimir Ostoja Zagourski leaves Europe and his career in the Russian Imperial Army for Africa. A 40 years, he seeks adventure and a change of scenery. He settles in the capital of the Belgian Congo, Léopoldville, and opened a photographic studio where he quickly met with success with the colonial authorities who asked him to photograph several official events.
Like his contemporaries, Zagouriski is aware of living the last moments of an Africa untouched by modernity: in 1924 the Citroën mission brings in 27km of film and 6000 photos. This mission is supported by the Geographical Society which declared at the time: "The most urgent task facing all travelers today, is to note by all possible means, in particular through photography and cinema, anthropological types and mores ”. In this same lineage, Zagourski endeavors to document the peoples and their customs. He thus takes many pictures during expeditions that he organizes in AEF, Rwanda, Kenya and Tanganyika. He collects these photos in prestigious albums entitled: Africa that is disappearing!, available in a limited number and all different with an embossed leather cover adorned with an elephant's head. Next to these prestigious works, he makes small formats with a postcard on the back. These postcards are real tools of memory and safeguard, spreading in colonial Europe a vision of Africa dreamed of on the verge of disappearing.
This attachment to the safeguard of this Africa by photography is seen in the frenzy of Zagourski photographed almost according to a serial method portraits, robes, ornaments, scarification, hairstyles, dances, masks, architectures, landscapes, etc. This ethnological approach, however, moves away from a simple scientific gaze, frontal, descriptive, for black and white images with precise light work, balanced compositions and an empathetic and close look to his subjects. He ennobles them with these photographs which almost evoke paintings, its print quality and editing work.
His reputation grew rapidly and 60 of these pictures paintings are presented in the Belgian pavilion of the Paris International Exhibition of 1937. Once again, Zagourski takes special care in the printing of these photographs printed on velvet photographic paper which bring grain and softness to the photograph.
Its exceptional collection produced between 1924 and 1944 (date of his death in Léopoldville), is striking for its scale, the quality of his photographs but also for the testimony they provide. The Maison de la Photographie de Marrakech presents a selection from the collection "Africa which disappears ! ». This selection wants to show the diversity of Zagourski's work but also the exceptional quality of his photographs.. From these portraits, where each frame is chosen specifically for the subject, to these landscapes, where the light animates the composition, the disappearing Africa ! is an exceptional collection of images of a world on the verge of extinction.