Aurès, 1935

The role she played in the French Resistance, her commitment when the situation got worse in the Algerian conflict, and her position as a feminist have overshadowed the fact that ethnography was the first and great passion Germaine Tillion kept throughout her long life (1907-2008). This book reports on the campaign she carried out with her colleague Thérèse Rivière (1901-1970) in the middle of the thirties in the mountains of Aurès, in Algeria. The trip was commissioned by the Musée d’Ethnographie of the Trocadéro (before it would become the Musée de l’Homme under the impulse of Georges-Henri Rivière, Thérèse’s brother). The empathy Germain Tillion and her colleague had for the populations of the region can be seen clearly, as well as their true capacity to document the ways of living, the material conditions, the natural decor. The work accompanies an exhibition at the Pavillon populaire de Montpellier until 15 April.

• Aurès, 1935, photographs by Thérèse Rivière and Germaine Tillion, text by Christian Phéline, Hazan, 2018, 144 p., €24.95.