Lecture, débat, dédicace avec Gwenaëlle Abolivier autour d'ELLA MAILLART

The first illustrated biography of Ella Maillart, navigator, ski champion and great explorer of the 20th century.

Her athletic youth foreshadowed the liberated explorer she was to become: by the age of thirty, Ella Maillart (1903-1997) had founded a field field hockey club, represented Switzerland at the Paris Olympics in the sailing category, sailed the Mediterranean with four friends and participated in the first world alpine skiing championships. Then, fleeing a Europe ravaged by the Great War, the self-taught young woman did her humanities on the road, choosing the path of Asia, embracing the nomadic way of life that fascinated her and taking a keen interest in Eastern philosophies.
"I have eyes that love to see": throughout her life, this adventuress has nurtured a documentary relationship with reality. As a field reporter, her photographic eye has focused on local populations with ethnographic concern. With talent and sensitivity, she captured a world in the throes of change and disappearance, the better to bear witness to it.
This biography of her adventurous life is largely illustrated by her own photographs, many of them previously unpublished, thanks to the holdings of Photo Élysée (Lausanne) and the Geneva library.