John victor aspinall, an Englishman born in Delhi in June 1926, was famous for two things: making millions from covert gambling parties, and his enduring love for wild animals. The latter led him to establish a conservation charity, the Aspinall Foundation, which runs two private zoos in Kent, in southern England. In the late 1990s, the foundation took on its most ambitious project yet: reintroducing captive gorillas into the wild. Since then, over 60 gorillas of all ages have been flown from European zoos to the Batéké Plateau, a region of lush forests in south-eastern Gabon, in central Africa. Several of them died before fully adjusting to their new environs, but most of the gorillas have survived. Already, the community has welcomed over 25 free newborns.
Decades ago, before they were almost wiped out by poachers, gorillas freely roamed the plateau. Today, the foundation’s transplants are released into the Batéké Plateau National Park, a protected area spread over some 200,000 hectares. The park is protected by natural barriers such as rivers, but artificial protections are also crucial to the gorillas’ well-being, and the foundation hires anti-poaching patrols to watch over them.
In June 2011, the foundation invited the French photographer Cyril Ruoso to spend a month in Gabon chronicling the lives of relocated gorillas. Ruoso, who is now 45 years old, studied biology as a young man before switching his attention to photography and art. In Gabon, he had a perfect opportunity to combine his love of nature with his passion for visual storytelling. He eventually compiled photographs from the trip into a collection, titled A Nouveau Terre de Gorilles—roughly, “Once Again a Land of Gorillas.”
Because the animals can be aggressive and dangerous, Ruoso was forbidden from using intrusive equipment such as a flash. While working, Ruoso said, he tried to “become one of them,” and to take photographs as he might have done if he “were a member of their community.” His images have the sudden, informal quality of snapshots, yet still treat their subjects tenderly. Ruoso’s portraits of the gorillas reveal a deep intimacy, and capture expressions startlingly evocative of human emotions.
His goal, Ruoso said, was to tell a “story about humans who tried to repair what has been destroyed before by humans,” and to capture images that help humans empathise with his animal subjects. “Look into the eyes of an ape,” he said, “and you’ll understand that we are very close.” But Ruoso admitted to a limited faith in such work’s potential. “I don’t have any illusions about the power of photography to change human behaviour.”