Camera Club presents images of Cameroon

Members and guests of the Montreal Camera Club are in for a special treat on Nov. 17, when Marie-Claude Simard brings a photo-journalist’s perspective to the exploration of a different land and culture with her informative and beautiful images of the Women of the Forest of the Cameroon.

Simard is the editor of the West Island weekly Cités Nouvelles. She is also a freelance photographer, and as an independent photojournalist, spent three weeks in the equatorial forest of Cameroon in May 2007.

Accompanied by the president of the Campo Ma’an women’s coalition, Simard went from village to village and met with the women who make up the dynamic force of development in these Bantu and Pygmy communities. Hundreds of women’s enterprises and associations have been started since 2006, the year the forest of Campo Ma’an joined the International Model Forests Network. Cultivators, fruit gatherers, shrimp fisherwomen and women activists are fighting to reclaim the forest, which has been dominated by the huge forestry industry for the past 50 years.

Linking sustainable forest management with the solidarity of women and feminism, Simard published a photo essay in the February 2008 issue of La Gazette des femmes. From Aug. 14 to Sept. 9 of this year, she is exhibiting a series of 32 photographs at la Galerie du Grand Chef at L.L. Lozeau.

Regular meetings of the Montreal Camera Club are held on Monday night at 7:30 p.m. at Westmount Park Church, 4695 de Maisonneuve Boul. W. (at the corner of Lansdowne Ave.). Entrance is at the back of the church. For more information, log on at www.montrealcameraclub.com or send an email to mtlcc@montrealcameraclub.com