An interview with Matthieu Dandoy
Ernest Becker Foundation | September 26, 2023
Matthieu Dandoy is a French documentary photographer. Self-taught, he started as a video journalist before going back to still photography. He is also an author, video editor and director. After a trip in Venezuela in 2012, he started to feel the need to use his skill for a bigger purpose. His first movie, about the Venezuelan crisis, was aired in 2018. That same year, he traveled to Mauritania to meet with the anti-slavery activist Biram Dah Abeid and offered his support to the cause. He later became Biram’s photographer and covered the 2019 Mauritanian presidential campaign. Back in France, Matthieu wrote an essay regarding slavery and nonviolent activism, Breaking the Masters’ Grip, drawing inspiration from his experiences across the world and Ernest Becker’s writing. It was published in Let’s Explore Magazine in December 2021. Click here to read the essay.
Tell us about yourself and what you do, as well as how you discovered Ernest Becker.
I’m a French photographer, videographer, and writer. I started out as a journalist, and then fell back in love with photography. Now I specialize in documentary photography, focusing on issues like labor rights and slavery. I discovered Ernest Becker during the 2020 pandemic. It was very insightful to read about these ideas during a major event where everybody was practicing this denial at an unexpected level.
Where did you find the book?
I heard it mentioned on some YouTube channels and it grabbed my attention. So I went to find a copy of the book which I read during lockdown – which was the perfect time to read. It was very eye opening, because during the same year, in the beginning of 2020, I was following this anti-slavery activist in Geneva, where he was receiving a prize and many other activists were there from all over the world. I went there with the intention to identify what was the common denominator of all these activists, the microstructure, what is common between them. To think people can be risking their life for the sake of an idea, what does that take? What is the recipe, what kind of personalities allow people to be willing to die? Between 2018 and 2019 I was working a lot between South America and Africa, and I made a movie about certain crises. And I was already working with Mauritania activists. So it was at a time when I was feeling the most alive, and also wondering, what does it all mean? So in 2020, when I came across Becker’s work it was the most logical perspective, and very, very eye-opening in terms of making me understand better how activists can sacrifice their freedom or their lives.
What are the parallels between Becker’s writing and your work?
In my essay, I talk about three activists in Mauritania. I didn’t realize when I was speaking with them in 2019 how relevant all these elements are to what Becker talks about. I used three personal stories to illustrates the way cultures provide a mechanism for meaning. There was a very strong existential motivation – they told me there was always a feeling of being part of something bigger. Some of them lost everything they had, but they’re fighting for the dignity of black Africans. So it was worth it, even if they went to jail. My main point in this essay is that our cultural provides values, and in some places like Mauritania it can be based just on the color of the skin, because of their ancestry. So I was thinking of how to explain that, or in terms of Becker, how to overcome the cultural limitation of where you grew up. Confronting the mechanism of culture, and asking when is it worth it to put yourself in a fight for freedom?
It has been outlawed and criminalized in Mauritania but it’s still there. There are some laws that prevent slavery, but they are not enforced. They are there because of the international pressure, but the only law that is even superior to the Constitution is Islamic law. They use it as they wish. There is particular version of the Islam law that gets distorted, because in the beginning slavery was okay for Muslims as long as they freed their slaves once they converted. But it’s already a deformation of the Islamic law. There are actually lots of parallels to be made between slavery and preachers, because a lot of the slavers texts are quite religious, talking about loyalty to one’s masters, and the guilt of the leader. Slavers in Mauritania don’t think that they’re doing anything wrong because it is their worldview.
I realized that pacifism or non-violence is preached by anti-slavery activists, because non-violence and pacifism is already the acknowledgement that every man is all the same. We’re all living with this fear of death.
Is your life ever at risk?
I’ve been detained in Mauritania, but it wasn’t the worst outcome. Going in, you’re aware that it’s quite dangerous. The adrenaline rush happens in the moment can also protect you from certain outcomes.
Have Becker’s ideas changed the way that you approach your own work?
Of course. One thing I really took from Becker is how everybody is building their own hero’s journey. It resonated a lot with me. I was kind of aware before, but after reading Becker I really became aware of all the significance of me trying to work for great causes and foreign countries and putting my life at risk in particular. And maybe that’s why I toned it down a bit [laughs]. But most importantly, something I’ve learned from journalism is that when you’re aware of your own prejudices, it helps you to minimize them. It’s very enlightening – and troubling – to realize that people like jihadists and activists fighting for peace, in a weird way they have the same underlying motives in the fighting. We are all searching for meaning.
*Note: This interview was conducted in 2022.