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=Alexis de Vilar=

(In Construction...)
The quirky, bold and insightful prism through which Alexis de Vilar views the world, is quite unlike any other photographer. His work is both a revelation and a celebration of the essence of what it means to be human and the spirit of place.

Christopher Rimmer, world famous photographer

One day, a great man named Alexis de Vilar told me: " You know, anyway ... the most beautiful picture is the one you can not take ! "Since then, I look at the world as if I had missed a thing..."

Emmanuel Le Masson, French photographer

This heart-warming, poetic and beautifully photographed documentary follows international photographer Alexis de Vilar on a journey to present an intimate portrayal of what will be a true African success story: The Great Green Wall project. We follow him and his camera as he makes a remarkable journey of discovery along this magnificent natural defense system.

Alex Tweddle, producer / director, Angry Man Films, UK upon shooting in Morocco the documentary “Africa through a lens” for the BBC.

His images transport us and touch us, true works of art changed into something eternal, on a canvas that gives rise to emotions which go beyond two dimensions until they acquire an ethical and aesthetic presence of unequaled value. Day to day photographs, touching landscapes, traditional tribes, faces, and amazing and heartwarming values, behind the lens. A true hero of the XXth and XXst centuries, the “Cousteau of the Earth”, exactly how he was called by the celebrated Parisian editor Robert Laffont in 1992. His active and generous fight in favor of the last traditional peoples have forced him to wage battles with unending energy against policies and economic interests from the highest levels of government. Because Alexis de Vilar is one of those activists that does not cease and continues to fight injustice, he denounces them and can claim honesty and a clean conscience.

Erik Vokel, Behind the lens diaries

It was in June 2007 that I first met Alexis de Vilar in Saint Louis, Sénégal. I met the man before I knew his work. He struck me as warm, a bon-vivant, a slightly hedonistic epicurean. In Saint-Louis it was quite clear that he was on a grand voyage, and I was impressed by the diversity of his projects. This longing, this search for a lost Paradise is what we find in his photographs. Alexis prefers to work in black and white, using a traditional « silvered » technique in which he finds a poetry that fits with his desire to show only what is beautiful on Earth. Alexis de Vilar is not documenting. He is proposing his vision of Paradise as sole resident, before transporting us there.

'''Gilles Walusinski photographer, vice-président at the JEU DE PAUME, Paris. '''

Following in the footsteps of the painter Paul Gauguin, another exile from his own time and society, and with whom he shares, moreover, an admiration for the female beauty, Alexis de Vilar offers a view of life that reflects other dimensions and other parameters. There's no doubt that as an author, he is cursed with all the anguish that that entails - not only in a literary context but also in the context of his photographic work, although the latter has become extraordinarily valued by collectors. But like Gauguin, Alexis de Vilar's work brings us a special light, a glow. His one way voyage implies a painful path, from the initial process towards direct experience, the only way that allows an understanding of civilizations and cultures so removed from our own. I don't think I'm mistaken in saying that, in his madness, Alexis de Vilar means to stop time, and thereby, oh what a challenge, to trump eternitet .Jaume Soler i de Magriña, Art historian at the National Contemporary Museum (MNAC).

Early Life

Alexis de Vilar (born Santiago Alejandro de Vilar Hernández, July 24, 1948) is a Spanish photographer, writer, and film maker whose career spans almost five decades and has become with time one of the most collected and popular photographers worldwide, with work in more than 250 private collections and museums. As a writer although his 4 novels, The Human Gods Bruguera, Barcelona 1980, African blues Plaza y Janés, Barcelona 1985; Alizés, Paris 1988, The dove and the hawk Columbus, Barcelona 1987; Mestizajes, Barcelona 1995, The Mechanical Forest and Goodbye, Barcelona, attracted critical acclaim and admiration by such luminaries like Ivan Illich, Luis Buñuel, Stanley Kubrick, Carlos Barral among many others, they didn’t had the same tremendous success as his photograph. As for his first essay, Soon it will be Night, he published himself in San Francisco in 1975 with the help of his friend, the legendary poet Lawrence Ferlinguetti (City Lights Books) that wrote on the cover, a much ahead of his time, quote: “An accusation of those who make Night, in a place where all should be Light”.

Alexis de Vilar began taking photographs as a teenager with a Mamiya C330 that incidentally was handed to him in the island of Ibiza by a professional photographer while he was waiting for his brother to land at the local harbor. In turn Alexis was about to depart for Barcelona and the photographer asked him if he could hand over the camera to a friend upon reaching the city the next day. This took place in 1964 at a time when Ibiza had not yet an airport, so all the communications were due by boat. Alexis dreamed to become an architect but that camera, that he dissembled during the cruise night journey, changed his path. Upon arrival the next day he called the people he was supposed to hand over the camera and managed to keep it for the weekend as they were away. Somehow and this was quite a feat, the young Alexis got the number for the most iconic top model at the time, Margit Kocsis (an abstract painter as well that was famous for riding almost naked a white stallion for a brandy advert ) and to Alexis’s surprise she agreed to be taken pictures for free. Not being able to pick the model on his car for lack of a driving license, Alexis collected Margit with a taxi and don’t having either a studio, he took her to the cemetery that presides over the city in Miramar mountain. To his own surprise the resulting pictures were good enough. Suddenly his architecture dream was over.

In the follow years Alexis won an ward at the 1st International Advertising Film Festival in Barcelona aged 22 years old and the same year represented Spain in Cannes. But tried of the commercial side of advertising, he turned to become a war correspondent in Uganda in 1972 and the after focused on social and environmental issues. In 1978 he founded in Brussels the Tribe Life Fund, an interactional association to help preserve the so-called primitive peoples, and the ecosystems that make up their natural habitats, from the advances of industrial society. A passionate and exciting man that exudes energy from all four sides; a person that imposes his presence, knowledge, works, and personal fulfillment. A simple and close imposition, not at all pretentious, always natural, pure vitality.

His works as a writer has conquered some of the best newspaper and magazines around the world, and as a photographer has presented his work in art galleries and museums in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. A career filled with anecdotes, journeys, and illustrious partners in life, vital enrichment and transcendent accomplishments such as Alan Watts, Cypriot President Makarios, Sir James Mancham (President of the Seychelles Islands), Frederick Forsyth and Larry Collins (writers and former war correspondents), Dr. Christiaan Barnard, Glenda Jackson, Michael Chaplin, Luis Buñuel, Arthur C. Clarke, Ivan Illich and Henry Miller, among many other personalities from the worlds of politics, arts, and sciences. Author, photographer and explorer, Alexis de Vilar has spent almost 50 years photographing distant cultures and his work is the subject of solo exhibitions at galleries and museums in Africa, Asia and America. Over the years, Alexis has visited over thirty countries, and has become a specialist in Third World problems, in particular those of Africa and Asia.

He has published several books and novels and is currently working on several others. As an international journalist, Alexis was the only journalist allowed to enter the Victor Versten prison at Cape Town while Nelson Mandela was imprisoned there.

In 1979 Alexis was selected by UNESCO to write an official television series for the International Year of the Child, due to his experience with childhood problems in the Third World. Sometime later he went on special assignment for National Geographic / Rutas del Mundo. He also founded the Tribal Life Fund in Brussels, an international large-scale effort to preserve the integrity of primitive tribes. In 1992, a well-known publisher labelled Alexis, the ‘Cousteau of the Earth’, as he continues fighting alone to protect from our Western civilization, the last traditional peoples and their supporting ecosystems. Internationally he is one of the most successful, creative and sought after photographers still alive and working. He speaks numerous African tribal languages and often returns to live amongst these indigenous peoples.

References



https://www.eitb.eus/es/audios/detalle/873444/levando-anclas-22042012–america-alexis-vilar–audio-viajes/