The Prix AFD (French Development Agency) for Best Photo Story was awarded to Patrick Willocq. The series was taken between January 1, 2012, and September 24, 2012, on the theme “Men and Cities.” The Prix AFD grants the winner 7000€ in cash, and up to 4000€ towards the purchase of a photography print to be donated to the agency’s collection. The prize will be awarded again in 2013.

On the road from Bikoro to Bokonda 

This project was born after several trips in a dozen villages in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is a testimony of everyday Batwa Pygmies and Bantu life in the province of Equateur. I direct the villagers in front of their huts, considered as a back drop and compose "Africain tableau".
I grew up in this country that I love. I know very well these villages since, parallel to my photographic work, I have been offering for the last 2 years community-based and fair-trade tours to meet these villagers. I have always been struck by the beauty, simplicity and dignity of daily life, despite all the hardship they face.
I compose my photographs around human relationships and the role of women and men, the role of the forest, nourishing heart but under daily pressure from the villagers and, traditions still entrenched but sometimes disappearing in favor of more westernized tools and behaviors.
I also wanted to witness the peace that prevails in the West, with the complicity of the villagers themselves actors committed to contributing to our project. A different reality than the Eastern Congo. A reality that Western media regularly focus on and, although dramatic, stigmatizes the whole country.

My passion for travel, discovery, and learning about different cultures, my desire to document the realities that I witness since my childhood and my passion for photography over the past 25 years have been closely intertwined. Currently 43 years old, I have lived 30 years outside France, out of which 7 years in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
I am a self-taught photographer. In 2009, I make the decision to "come out of my darkroom." I launch my website and participate to the Magazine Photo annual competition with a publication within the same year, and again in 2010.
In 2012, the growing need to express my creativity through photography pushes me to devote myself entirely to it (I was working for multinationals in Asia Pacific for over 20 years).
In May, I was amongst the 10 winners of the Reponses Photo Magazine Ilford B & W Competition.
The serie "on the road from Bikoro to Bokonda, DR Congo" was recently exhibited at the Grand Palais during Paris Photo 2012 (SFR Jeunes Talents contest), the Festival Circulation (s) in Paris in February 2013 and the Festival des Photographes Itinerants in Bordeaux in April 2013.
Other photographic works will also be exhibited at the Angkor Photo Festival in Cambodia in December 2012 and during the next European Festival of Nude Photography in Arles in May 2013.

Patrick Willocq