Across the American continent, from Brazil, Colombia, the Caribbean islands, Central America and as far south as the United States, masquerades are organized to celebrate and keep alive the history and memory of African slaves and their Creole or mestizo descendants. The images in Cimarron bear witness to these traditions that are threatened by the power of globalization.

The term cimarrón was used in colonial America to name slaves escaping from captivity. Fugitive African slaves who lived a life of freedom, in remote corners and managed to establish their own communities, or joined the indigenous peoples forging new identities.

Cimarrón , includes a series of photographic portraits of the descendants of those people. Brightly colored silks and cottons are combined with woven fibers, leaves, feathers and body paint. Props include emblems of slavery and slavers: ropes, sticks, guns and machetes.

The photographs, which are complemented by texts by specialist anthropologists to provide ethnographic and historical context, record real people whose collective sense of memory, folk history and imagination dramatically defy our expectations.

Charles Fréger, is an acclaimed photographer whose work is defining a new genre within documentary photography.