EDOUARD ELIAS

Originally from Gard, France, Edouard Elias lived in Egypt for ten years before returning to France in 2009 to study business. Soon after he branched off into photography and enrolled at the École de Condé in Nancy, where he developed a fascination for war photography. For his end-of-course internship in 2012, he travelled to Turkey and then Syria to shoot his first photo-reportage on Syrian refugee camps. Since then he has returned to Syria multiple times and was detained as a hostage by Islamic State jihadists over the course of ten months. 

Upon his return, Elias began working on a long-term project focusing on The Foreign Legion in The Central African Republic and in France. Simultaneously he shot photo-stories on the use of rape as a weapon of war in The Democratic Republic of the Congo, on rescues of migrants in the Mediterranean as well as on the French Juvenile Justice System’s closed educational centers. His last personal work focus on the trenches warfare in the Dombass region ( eastern Ukraine ). 

In 2015 Edouard Elias won the Prix de la ville de Perpignan Rémi Ochlik. The Sergent Vermeille price 2015, selected 3 times to the Bayeux Calvados war correspondant price and at the Joop Swart Masterclass of the World Press Photo 2015.