"Diana Portrait"

Diana is a young Baka pygmy girl encountered at Camp Sikoum in Cameroon, in May 2022. The Baka are one of the hunter-gatherer peoples of the Congo Basin, whose relationship to the equatorial forest is of exceptional richness. Her hair with its golden highlights — a genetic characteristic present in some Baka communities — and her red necklace mark her out immediately.

Diana is not posing: she was caught in a movement, her gaze lifted slightly to one side, her body leaning forward. The watercolour works through opposition — cold grey background, warm brown washes on the skin, white of the paper left bare at the shoulders — to preserve something of the movement, of the living instant, of a gaze that nothing had solicited.