10th May 2023.
The Villèle historical museum takes part in Time of memory

For the 18th National day for the memory of slavery, the slave trade and abolition and in partnership with the Foundation for the memory of slavery, the Villèle historical museum is adding to its collections 25 Visual works by Karl Kugel, created for the second French edition of the novel by Gustave Oelsner-Monmerqué, Schwarze und Weiße. Skizzen aus Bourbon (Blacks and Whites. Sketches of Bourbon island), co-edited by the Villèle museum and the University of Reunion in 2017.

A convinced abolitionists and an attentive observer of the Creole society he discovered when staying on Bourbon island from 1842 to 1845, Gustave Oelsner-Monmerqué, a Franco-German journalist, has left us with a novel where the narrative of the fiction intertwines with the reality of a period scarred by the question of slavery.

Karl Kugel, a photographer and visual creator, accepted to read between the lines of the work to rise to the challenge of creating images representing these two facets of the novel.

To discover the visual representation of Noirs et Blancs, esquisses de Bourbon