Biophilia

*Biophilia* explores the interdependence between the Baka people and the forest of Djoum, Cameroon. Through their everyday lives, it reveals a way of belonging to nature that is threatened by deforestation and habitat loss.

Biophilia is a documentary photography project exploring the interdependence between the Baka people and the tropical forest of Djoum, in southern Cameroon. Through their way of life and their everyday relationship with their surroundings, it explores our sense of belonging to the community of living beings and the fragility of the bonds that sustain us.

The title refers to biophilia, the innate human affinity for life and living systems. The project is rooted in a fundamental idea: we are not separate from nature, but part of it. Our existence depends on a complex web of relationships between species, territories and ecosystems that we often overlook or take for granted.

In the forest around Djoum, the Baka, an Indigenous people of the Congo Basin forests, maintain a longstanding cultural and historical relationship with their environment. The forest is home, sustenance, a source of knowledge and a space for communal life. It provides food, medicinal plants and materials, while holding places connected to memory and practices passed down through generations. Their relationship with the land offers a way of understanding life in which human beings do not stand apart from or above nature, but participate in an ecosystem on which they depend.

The photographs explore this sense of belonging through scenes of everyday life. A man gathers wild honey and shares it; hands reach for leaves and forest fruits; women and families build shelters from branches and foliage; people move together through their surroundings, work, cook and share life in the camp. Through these gestures, bodies and natural materials, the relationship with the forest emerges not as an abstract idea, but as something lived and tangible.

The series alternates intimate scenes with expansive, immersive images of the landscape. The canopy, vines, dense vegetation and light filtering through the campfire smoke reveal the forest as a living, ever-changing presence.

This relationship brings to mind Aldo Leopold’s concept of the biotic community: a community encompassing humans, animals, plants, soil and water. From this perspective, belonging to the forest means recognising that our lives are intertwined with other forms of life, and that caring for the land also means protecting the conditions that make life possible for all its inhabitants.

The Baka people offer me a perspective from which to question the modern separation between humanity and nature. I do not seek to portray them as an idealised community, untouched by the contradictions of the present, or as a symbol of pristine nature. Rather, I want to approach their knowledge, practices and relationship with their surroundings through a documentary lens, recognising them as protagonists of their own lives and of a territory undergoing change.

Against the backdrop of the climate crisis and biodiversity loss, Biophilia invites us to reconsider our relationship with the living world. The photographs encourage us to see the forest not as an external resource to be exploited or preserved at a distance, but as a community of which we are part. The reciprocity, respect and sense of belonging that run through these images open up a reflection on other ways of inhabiting the planet.

Yet this relationship is under threat. Deforestation and the transformation of the land endanger forest ecosystems and the ways of life that depend on them. When the forest disappears, what is lost is not only trees and species: spaces of subsistence, knowledge, cultural practices and relationships built over generations may also vanish. Habitat loss threatens both ecological balance and the continuity of community life.

The next phase of Biophilia will involve returning to Djoum to document the transformations of the forest and their consequences for Baka communities. I want to continue exploring the relationship I have already photographed and observe what happens as the territory changes: how the landscape is altered, which spaces and resources become inaccessible, and how these transformations affect everyday life and people’s relationship with their surroundings.

This return will expand the project from an intimate exploration of existing bonds into a reflection on their fragility. I intend to document both the visible traces of deforestation and its effects on ways of inhabiting the land, on knowledge and on the practices that connect communities to the forest.