As a Sahara lover and tireless traveler, the photographer Maximilien Bruggmann (1934-2016) bequeathed us a considerable work, accumulated during sixty journeys which have taken him to all continents ... except to Australia. Over 150,000 slides tell the story of the men, the landscapes, the culture of the countries and regions where he stayed, the people, their everyday life or history he shared.
In the Sahara, Maximilien Bruggmann went to the most remote places to meet his nomadic friends. He was passionate about rock art whose authors, early photographers, painted or engraved in stone the snapshots of prehistoric life, when the Sahara was still green.
Maximilien Bruggmann, trained graphic designer and photographer by passion, has given his photographs an unusual aesthetic. The extreme meticulousness with which he archived them, makes them today rare and irreplaceable documents.
Maximilien Bruggmann retained a sense of the past and his taste for depths from his Lucerne origins. With the eyes of the graphic designer and the soul of the traveler, he became passionate about the Sahara, its rock engravings, its deserted and yet inhabited immensities. A special filter protected him from the ugliness of the world and allowed him to devote himself entirely to his beauties. Moving away from the hustle and bustle of the day, he took the time to observe the peoples of the world and share their daily emotions. Pre-Columbian civilizations, the spice route, the origins of Egypt, Maximilien Bruggmann travelled with an attentive and tender lens on the planet. The Saharan travels brought him a step closer to what he sought in man: wisdom.
During the last years of his life, Maximilien Bruggmann had begun to digitize his photos. This work continues today thanks to his brother Peter and to the association of "Amis de Maximilien Bruggmann".
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These articles about this exhibition have appeared in the press:
FYK’mag
Les amis de Maximilien
