Anita Conti et la Bretagne

Writer, bookbinder, photographer and the first woman oceanographer, she made her mark in the very masculine world of fishing. In 1935, she took part in various campaigns on the first French oceanographic ship and then, before the Second World War, on a trawler-morrel boat in the Barents Sea and in Spitsbergen for 100 days. Her missions enabled her to publish reports and articles illustrated by her photographs taken with her Rolleiflex camera; she did not fail to denounce the over-exploitation of the oceans. During the war, she obtained permission to embark as a Navy photographer on minesweepers in the English Channel and the North Sea, photographing mine clearance attempts.

During the years of occupied France, Anita Conti helped to improve fishing conditions on the West African coast; in Senegal, she set up fish drying stations and created a shark fishery in Guinea. Anita Conti was accepted and respected by the fishermen and sailors of the Royale, whom she photographed like a reporter, with daring views: dives and counter dives that let us experience deep-sea fishing from the inside. In 1952, she embarked for several months on the trawler Bois Rosé on a campaign on the banks of Newfoundland, off Canada.