Pierre Ichac

Pierre Ichac, born June 7, 1901 in Paris and died August 20, 1978 in Clichy, was a French photographer, filmmaker, reporter, explorer, and ethnologist specializing in Africa, the Algerian Sahara, and sub-Saharan Africa. He was the son of financial journalist Eugène Ichac and Jeanne Manteau, and the brother of mountain filmmaker Marcel Ichac. He began his career in 1922 as an agricultural engineer in the sugar refineries of Upper Egypt. Pierre Ichac then made several scientific films on Egypt, the Middle East, and the Hoggar, where he spent two six-month stays with the Tuaregs. A report on the Hoggar Tuaregs published in the magazine VU in 1930 brought him to the attention of the general public. In 1932, he served as assistant to Austrian director Georg Wilhelm Pabst on the production of Atlantis, a film based on the novel by Pierre Benoit and set in the Hoggar Desert. In 1934-1935, he participated in several expeditions to French Equatorial Africa and the Hoggar Desert. He was notably the filmmaker and photographer for the French Alpine expedition alongside Captain Raymond Coche, François de Chasseloup-Laubat, Roger Frison-Roche, and Pierre Lewden. He participated in the discovery of the Mertoutek rock art frescoes. The Coche mission officially discovered the Hoggar rock art sites, which Henri Lhote's mission would later document.