Photoreporter, ex-hostage in Syria originally from Gard, Edouard Elias travels the world to testify through images of crisis situations. Born in Nîmes, the one who grew up in Uzès is the sponsor of the exhibition on the 40th anniversary of the second REI in Nîmes. An exhibition of around forty photos which opens this Tuesday, May 23 in the main courtyard of the town hall.
Edouard Elias, are you sponsoring an exhibition in Nîmes on the Foreign Legion where some of your photos will be exhibited? What will visitors be able to admire?
The 2e REI celebrates this year its 40 years of presence in the city where I was born. Alongside the work of other photographers and the ECPAD (Communication and Audiovisual Production Establishment of Defense), visitors will be able to discover nearly a dozen photographs from my first report with the Foreign Legion.
It was in 2014, in the Central African Republic during Operation SANGARIS and precisely alongside the legionnaires of the 2e KING of Nîmes!
How was this immersive experience alongside the military? Was it subsequently renewed?
This almost complete month spent with the Nîmes legionnaires in external operations constituted my very first experience with the French army. Enjoying immense freedom in my work (compared to the reports I can produce in the army today), I discovered the ”true” life of the French soldier at war: in combat and in his daily life, without shadow. So I did not hesitate to reveal them in all aspects. Sometimes tired, worn out or even crying during very high intensity situations. With the only limit that I had set myself: respect for their dignity as human beings.
Conclusive, this experience was repeated the following year in Nîmes. Where, there too, for a month, for the Nouvel Observateur, I was able to follow the legionnaires of the 2e REI this time in training, at the regiment and at the garrigue camp.
What have you learned from these successive experiences of immersion in the Foreign Legion?
I am the worst thing for a soldier: I am a journalist! (laughs). And despite that, I was immediately integrated into this close-knit body, united and driven by strong values, including camaraderie. As an orphan, this unfailing solidarity between brothers in arms touches me enormously. And all the more so since I was in immersion with the Legion, when I learned of the execution of my friend the American journalist James Foley in Raqqa in Syria by the Islamic State (August 19, 2014).
Being comforted by men who live daily with the risk of death and the mourning of their comrades in arms, really helped in my reconstruction. Today, the Foreign Legion is therefore naturally an institution to which I have both great respect and affection.
How do you explain your appetite for covering crisis situations, and more particularly for armed conflicts?
Let’s say earlier that I want to be where the story is. To participate as a witness and observer is already very strong! Especially when your job allows you to show the world the faces – anonymous or not – of those who are building this “great” story.
From mid-2013 to spring 2014, you spent 10 months in captivity in Aleppo after being taken hostage with your colleague Didier François. How do you recover from such an experience?
By deciding! As soon as I returned to France, I took back my camera and continued to do my work, in particular by going to the fields of war. First by desire, but also by choice. I didn’t want to tell myself that the Islamic State had won and taken away this immoderate passion that I devote to my work.
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