11° Edition

Congo in Conversation

Laureate of the 11th Carmignac Photojournalism Award, Finbarr O’Reilly dedicated his reportage to the Democratic Republic of Congo. Confronted with the pandemic, he transformed his project into Congo in Conversation, an innovative collaborative platform where Congolese journalists and photographers reveal, from within, the social, political and environmental challenges shaping the country. A first in the history of the Carmignac Award: real-time photojournalism.

Finbarr O'Reilly

© Finbarr O’Reilly pour la Fondation Carmignac

The Democratic Republic of Congo—known as Zaire between 1971 and 1997 and now called DRC, Congo-Kinshasa or DR Congo—is the second-largest country and fourth most populous country in Africa, as well as a leading French-speaking nation.

It has weathered a dark and convulsive history since its independence in 1960, long after Belgian King Leopold II appropriated the territory. There has been the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the bloody power grab by Mobutu Sese Seko, the corrupt, inept and endless dictatorship of “Papa Maréchal”, an almost permanent state of war between 1996 and 2005 (more than 5 million dead), with miscellaneous guerrillas, rebellions and banditry ever since, mainly in the north and north-east. All this has been against a backdrop of immense widespread poverty and the often illegal grabbing of equally immense lands and resources: in 2018, the DRC was classified 176th out of 200 countries by the human development index of the UNDP (United Nations Development Program).

But since Félix Tshisekedi was elected president in December 2018, demarcating the first democratic transition in the history of the republic, hope has emerged both in Kinshasa as in the rest of the world. Real political stability and security, effective preservation and control of the country’s natural and mineral resources, and equitable reconstruction of the economy, infrastructures and health system seem to have been instated.

The tasks, barely begun, are proportional to the size of the country and its river.

While the Congo holds more than 50% of Africa’s water reserves, only 30% of its population has direct access to drinking water and 8% to electricity. Of its 58,000 km of roads, only 3,126 were asphalted in 2018. Malnutrition and endemic diseases such as malaria, AIDS or Ebola (which has just killed 2,000 more people) are deadlier than the violence, which is just as endemic, affecting villagers in the fields, guards in the nature reserves, and women everywhere. Another essential task is to further access to information. While the DRC has at least 450 radio stations (representing the principal media), as many print publications (but with very low circulation rates) and 135 TV channels (mostly for entertainment), less than 5% of the 95 million Congolese have Internet access. The Congo ranks 149th in the 2021 Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index.

But in Kinshasa, as in the other big cities, journalists, writers, local correspondents, photoreporters and videoreporters are doing their jobs as best they can, under appallingly precarious conditions. The Covid-19 pandemic, which closed the borders, immobilized people and dealt a terrible blow to a massively parallel economy. The Carmignac Foundation thus provides a unique opportunity for these professionals to share their voices and images of a magnificent country. It is filled with misfortune but also with wealth and hope, since two-thirds of the inhabitants are less than 20 years old.

Press freedom is being undermined by the conflict in the east of the country: journalists are caught between the Congolese authorities and the M23 rebel group. Between January 2024 and January 2025 in North Kivu, more than 25 community radio stations were looted or forced to shut down, and over 50 attacks on newsrooms and journalists were recorded. More broadly, journalists operate in a highly insecure environment throughout the DRC.
Reporters without Borders, 2025

The 11th Carmignac Photojournalism Award – dedicated to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) – was granted to Canadian-British photographer Finbarr O’Reilly.

His reportage began in January 2020, just before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic and the global lockdown. As the health situation deteriorated and borders closed, a different approach became necessary. Finbarr O’Reilly and the Award team – in close collaboration with the 11th-edition jury – rethought the framework of the project in response to the crisis and launched Congo in Conversation, a collaborative reportage created with a dozen Congolese photographers. The work was published online, in a monograph, and exhibited internationally.

Portraits of the *Congo in Conversation* team by Finbarr O’Reilly. *From left to right*: Raïssa Karama Rwizibuka, Moses Sawasawa, Arlette Bashizi, Justin Makangara, Guerchom Ndebo, Pamela Tulizo, Kudra Maliro, Charly Kasereka, Dieudonné Dirole, and Guylain Balume.

Health, lockdown, the informal economy, artistic production, access to water, as well as attacks by armed militias, human rights violations and environmental issues: by documenting both the often harsh realities and the enormous challenges facing Congo, these reports depict the country’s present and future with concrete facts, powerful images and cautious optimism. The contributing reporters, based across multiple locations in this vast territory, represent a new generation striving for change in a country exploited, looted and oppressed for decades. More than half of them are women—journalists, photographers and filmmakers who document local economies, religion, the lack of electricity, insecurity, as well as hair salons, menstrual stigma and the relationship between colonial history and beauty standards in Africa.

Congo in Conversation represents a first in the history of the Carmignac Photojournalism Award: real-time photojournalism. This collaborative reportage offers a portrait of life in the DRC that is as diverse as it is nuanced—shaped by its own context, yet confronted, like all of us, with an unprecedented global crisis.

Arlette Bashizi

When borders reopened, Finbarr O’Reilly was able to resume his reportage in the DRC, Congo, A Sublime Struggle, a title drawn from Patrice Lumumba’s independence speech.

His project explores key issues of security and human rights in the eastern region, while also examining their connections to environmental and climate disruption, the country’s colonial history, and the ongoing impact of extractive industries on the lives of Congolese people.

The project is enhanced through a collaboration with the International Criminal Court (ICC) as part of the “Life After Conflict” programme, which documents how Congolese communities navigate the consequences of war crimes and the processes of reparation.

While Congo in Conversation shed light on Congolese realities through the eyes of Congolese photographers, Finbarr O’Reilly’s reportage offers an external perspective — one shaped by someone seeking to understand his own degree of complicity in the transition and reinvention unfolding before him.

“The challenge of taking on a curatorial role was to manage the photographers without perpetuating outsider perspectives or falling prey to the very issues around representation we seek to challenge. This requires us to slow down both the production and consumption of images, to look beyond the immediate news cycle and take the longer, historical view. (…)
By reconfiguring Congo in Conversation into a collective book and exhibition, we move it from the ether to the page and to the wall, where audiences can take the time to engage not only with the work but also the historical and political forces shaping it. We cannot view Congo’s wars and troubles uncoupled from Belgium’s colonial brutality, nor from decades of exploitation of its vast natural resources by multinational corporations.
Over the past two decades, photography has emerged as contemporary Africa’s foremost art form. Dismantling the systems that have excluded African photographers from global conversations requires those of us in positions of privilege to recognise the structural advantages that have kept us in control. Shifting the power dynamics within photojournalism demands a move towards justice and equality, so that African photographers and other under-represented communities can assert material gains not through charity, but as their right. (…)
We are still a long way from that ideal, but our hope is that Congo in Conversation is a move in that direction.”
Finbarr O'Reilly

Mark Sealy is a British curator, cultural historian, and specialist in the relationships between photography, human rights, and representation. Director of Autograph ABP since 1991 and a professor at the University of the Arts London, he is committed to decolonizing photographic practice and amplifying under-represented voices. A curator and author of numerous international projects, he has received several distinctions, including an OBE for his contributions to the arts.

Finbarr O'Reilly :

You’ve written about how photography is inherently a racialized medium. In many conflict images from Africa or the Middle East, the violence inflicted upon Black and brown bodies is mostly documented by foreign photographers. That perpetuates the violence you’re talking about. (…) How do we develop and encourage other ways of seeing?

Mark Sealy :

That is the question. (…) We’re going to need another sense of photography. Its present unpicking will help push back some of the debasing historical images of the Black subject. (…) In internal European conflicts, the body often gets treated very differently. Whose lives do we value? If we can get to a place where the value of an African or Black person caught in conflict is treated with care and compassion, then we can begin to make progress. (…)

If local photographers are trained to reproduce what was done before, nothing will change. (…) What we have to do is generate and tell more complex stories, to help audiences see differently. We must break the chains of those visual burdens that have historically and culturally debased African countries.

Sometimes, even with good intentions, we unconsciously perpetuate certain things. (…) How we place images against each other, how we work in the wider context of their moment—that is the hard work, when we begin to think about how images influence culture.

The key for me is generosity. To break old methodologies, it isn’t about going somewhere and taking something out. That’s the “Leopold way.” Instead, we should ask: ‘How do we help you articulate the conditions of your existence to the wider world?’ (…)

Levinas’ idea is important: when I see you, I take responsibility for you. If I don’t, I’m undoing my own humanity. If I don’t recognize you, look into the face of the other with generosity, I undo my humanity. That is the metaphor for what change looks like: seeing someone first as an equal for whom I have responsibility. It’s reciprocal.

In our old colonial way of being, we’ve forgotten to take responsibility for the humanity of the other. We can turn away from migrants and refugees, use their bodies through the lens without including them. We haven’t been generous; we haven’t taken responsibility. We’ve taken something and used that space to further our own sense of greatness.

An authentic conversation should be: ‘I’m talking to you, you’re talking to me, and we’re sharing ideas.’ Maybe we should listen more to what people have to offer while there is still time.

This project led to the publication of two books co-published by Reliefs Editions: a monograph dedicated to Finbarr O’Reilly’s reportage, Congo, A Sublime Struggle, and a collaborative volume titled Congo in Conversation.

Congo in Conversation

Co-published by: Reliefs / Fondation Carmignac Release date: October 30, 2020 Bilingual: French/English Size: 21 × 28 cm, 128 pages Texts: Preface by Finbarr O’Reilly, laureate of the 11th Carmignac Photojournalism Award, Conversation between Mark Sealy, Finbarr O’Reilly and Emeric Glayse Photographs : Finbarr O’Reilly and Congo in Conversation contributors Price: 35 euros, 45 USD, 58 CAD, 35 GBP

Congo in Conversation, 2020

Congo, Une Lutte Sublime

Co-published by: Reliefs / Fondation Carmignac Release date: June 17, 2022 Bilingual: French/English Size: 24 × 28 cm, 128 pages Texts : Finbarr O’Reilly, Comfort Ero and Judge Antoine Kesia-Mbe Mindua Photographs : Finbarr O’Reilly Price: 35 euros, 45 USD, 58 CAD, 35 GBP