Collection: Pierre Fatumbi Verger

Pierre Edouard Leopold Verger (Paris, 4 November 1902 – Salvador, 11 February 1996) was a French-Brazilian self-taught photographer and ethnologist. He assumed the religious name Fatumbi. He was also a babalawo (Yoruba priest) who devoted most of his life to the study of the African diaspora - the slave trade, the Afro-derived religions of the new world, and the resulting cultural and economic flows to and from Africa.

After the age of 30, after losing his family, Pierre Verger pursued a career as a journalistic photographer. Black and white photography was his specialty. He used a Rolleiflex machine that is now at the Pierre Verger Foundation. Over the next fifteen years, he traveled four continents and documented many cultures that would soon disappear under the impact of Westernization.

Verger's contributions to ethnology consist of dozens of conference papers, journal articles, and books, and he was recognized by the Sorbonne University, which conferred on him a doctoral degree (Docteur 3eme Cycle) in 1966—a real achievement for someone who left from secondary school at 17.