© Patrick Willocq

Patrick Willocq’s project “On the road from Bikoro to Bokonda,” which he created by photographing villages in a Western province in his native Democratic Republic of Congo, was recently awarded the Prix AFD, given by the French Development Agency. The project, Willocq writes, “is a testimony of everyday Batwa Pygmies and Bantu life in the province of Equateur.” Willocq directs the villagers in his photographs to create “Africain tableau,” which is concerned with “human relationships and the role of women and men, the role of the forest, nourishing heart but under daily pressure from the villagers and, traditions still entrenched but sometimes disappearing in favor of more westernized tools and behaviors.” (more…)