Tina Kieffer

(Founder/President of the NGO “Toutes à l’école” & Journalist)

​​

From my past with Marie-Claire Magazine I have kept many friend photographers, who sometimes come to report about the Happy Chandara school that I founded in Phnom Penh.

High quality, colorful images to share the optimism of this cause, which pulls the little Cambodians away from the shantytowns to teach them in a school with turquoise walls.

So, when Gregory Herpe contacted me to offer me his talent in black and white, I was surprised. Humanitarianism, unlike the press, does not consist in

publishing aesthetics; it is necessary that the images touch the heart so that the gifts affluent.

​

Then, discovering Gregory’s work, I was convinced.

The strength of its contrasts struck me as its determination to give evidence of the benefits of girls’ education.

And as I was right to trust him …

Using black and white to describe childhood might seem a mistake, except at Happy Chandara where laughter echoes intimate dramas and deprivations.

The drama of its blacks shows in each picture the energy of the girls, who are going to reach for the moon and a brighter future.

The threat of its stormy skies bends to the almost audible joy that unite these images, where chiaroscuro is in the image of life, violent but resilient.

​

What Gregory has captured resembles to the man I found in him:

a mixture of extreme sensitivity and lapidary strength.

A man as contrasted as his black and white, whose gray infinity never stops to tell the story. Its worst as its best.

​

​

​​