On my search for examples of work that uses photography alongside illustration, I recently acquired a book by Guibert, Lefèvre and Lemercier, called The Photographer: Into war-torn Afghanistan with Doctores Without Borders.
On the jacket I found this short description of the project:
“At the end of July 1986, Didier Lefèvre left Paris for Afghanistan. He barely returned to tell the tale. It was his first major assignment as a photojournalist, documenting a Doctors without Borders mission. Camera in hand, Lefèvre traveled with a band of doctors and nurses into the heart of Northern Afghanistan, where the war between the Soviet Union and the Afghan Mujahideen was raging.
The mission affected Lefèvre as profoundly as the war affected contemporary history. His photographs, paired with the art of Emmanuel Guibert, tell the story of an arduous journey undertaken by men and women intent on mending what others destroy.”
The book starts with an historical overview and introduction by Alexis Siegel, who is also responsible for the translation. The story itself is made out of a combination of the available contact sheets from Didier Lefèvre and – where there was no photographical material – illustrations from Emmanuel Guibert. Knowing how difficult it is, to successfully combine both photography and illustration, I was impressed to see how well they were married in The Photographer . Emmanuel Guibert did a good job contrasting the the richly detailed black and white photography with very simple looking (!) artwork with thick blotted lines, that go extremely well with the darks in the photos without competing. To set the illustrations further apart, they are held in subdued colors, filled in by Frédéric Lemercier, who was also the designer of the book.
The Photographer: Into war-torn Afghanistan with Doctores Without Borders was originally published in three volumes in France.
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