“This volume should have been the first of my carnets. It was on the banks of the Niger that I felt I was becoming what I am. That was twenty-five years ago, in the summer of 1987, between Mopti and Gao. Equipped with my two Minolta X700s, I saw the chaos of the world organise itself in my viewfinder. I was twenty-three.

In January 2012 I decided to return to the loops of the Niger, to see Mopti, Gao, Gourma Rharous, Djenné and Timbuktu again. Geopolitics decided otherwise, so I dived back into my archives.” — Jean-Christophe Béchet