TITLE: The Bush Decoders

These photographs of African trackers are some of the thousands of photos I have taken as a professional hunter and a photo reporter for French hunting magazines. They are part of a project of a photobook in black and white that I want to carry out as a tribute to African trackers.
Indeed, African trackers are the cornerstone of all african hunts. However, they remain profoundly unknown, even ignored by the general public.
And the hunters themselves do not always give them the justice they owe them. Their science of tracking, and their extraordinary and undoubtedly immemorial ability to read the slightest and most improbable traces on the most arid and hard soils, make them the true decoders of a language which, in our modern civilizations, we have long since lost the use of.
These scenes were captured mostly in the Central African Republic during some Derby elan (Taurotragus derbianus) or some Bongo antilope (Tragelaphus eurycerus) hunt. I took some of these image with a little pocket camera that I always carry with me while reporting. It allows me to take pictures very quickly from unusual angles, while walking sometimes, and without the subject(s) noticing. These photographs represent everything I love about hunting in Africa, and above all, about Africa where I was born myself: a shared effort, a complicity in the same passion, all in an environment over which time has no effect. Since these photo were taken, I have often returned to the CAR, but each time with more difficulties and uncertainty because of the many conflicts that have ravaged this country in recent years. If this work is lucky enough to win an award, it will help me to make it better known and, hopefully, to find an editing company. Thank You!

AUTHOR: Guillaume Beau de Loménie (United States)

Guillaume Beau de Loménie lives in Cody, WY, since 2009.
He was granted United-States citizenship in 2017.
Guillaume was born in Madagascar, at this time a French territory, and because of his father's career in a major French bank, he lived most of his life as a child and teenager and until he was 20 years old in many African countries but also in Argentina.
A French Marine in Chad (Africa) where he took part in ground combats against Islamic groups for which he was awarded the Cross of Military Valour, Guillaume has become later a hunting guide in Siberia and Kamchatka, China, Africa and Central Asia where he conducted numerous horseback hunting through the Tian-Shan and the Altaï range.
In 2000, and for almost twenty years, Guillaume became also a main contributor as a writer and a photojournalist for French hunting magazines, Jours de Chasse first, then Chasses Internationales, (Hunting Days and Internationals Hunting) for which he produced stories about big game hunting expeditions all over the world, as well as numerous biographies about well-known European or American hunters-explorer and naturalists. Since March 2020 he collaborates on a new online magazine "Ranch Rodeo and Agriculture" which he feeds with photographs and stories about ranch life in America as well as portraits of cowboys and cowgirls.
With his wife, Isabelle, whom he married in Cody in 2017 after they met each other in France the year before, he carries out numerous photographic works about American west, ranch life, cowboys and cowgirls, rodeo and wild horses.