Gérald Bloncourt (Bainet, 1926 – 2018) was a Haitian painter and photographer who spent much of his life in the Paris suburbs. His photographic work documents social struggles, migration and political movements of the twentieth century, which makes him an important figure for understanding how art engages with recent history.
He grew up in Jacmel, in southern Haiti, and in 1944 took part in founding the Centre d'Art in Port-au-Prince. After the revolutionary days of January 1946, which brought down the Lescot government, he was sentenced to death. He escaped that fate but was expelled from the country. He settled in Paris, where he took up photography without giving up painting and printmaking.
A Communist militant, in 1948 he was appointed political head of the photography service of L'Humanité, and afterwards worked as a freelance photographer for many magazines. In 1974 he covered the Carnation Revolution in Portugal and, two years later, the Polisario Front's war against Morocco in Western Sahara. He returned to Haiti in 1986, after the fall of the Duvaliers, and in 1998 co-founded the committee known as the Committee to Try Duvalier.
His legacy lies in a large photographic archive on Portuguese emigration, working-class Paris and Haitian political life, preserved in books and exhibitions.