Draft:Guillaume Binet

• Comment: There are many entire sections with no references: note that all statements about a living person need adequate citations. ArthurTheGardener (talk) 16:21, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

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Guillaume Binet

Summary

Guillaume Binet (born 27 August 1973) is a French photojournalist and the founding partner of the photo agency MYOP.

Based in Paris, he has documented conflicts and humanitarian crises across the Middle East, North Africa, Eastern Europe, and beyond, contributing to major French and international publications including Libération, Le Monde, L'Obs, the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and The Guardian.. He has worked extensively with humanitarian organizations such as Médecins Sans Frontières, Action Against Hunger, the Red Cross, and the United Nations Foundation, and his Ukraine war photography appeared on the cover of Time magazine.

He has received two Picture of the Year International awards, the Grand Prix des lectrices de Elle, the BnF's Radioscopie de la France grant, and a UN Foundation Press Fellowship.

In 2025, he co-founded The PhotoBridge Project, a humanitarian visual-storytelling initiative connecting professional photojournalists with local NGOs.

Early Life and Education

Born in France, he graduated from the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs (the National School of Decorative Arts) in Paris in 2000, and has worked as a freelance photographer since 2001.

Career

MYOP Photo Agency

In 2005, Binet co-founded MYOP, a photographers' collective agency, serving as its founder and director from 2005 to 2010 and as its manager from 2005 to 2022. By 2022, MYOP — structured as a limited company — managed the journalistic, cultural, and institutional output of 22 photographers.

La Petite Poule Noire

Between 2009 and 2015, Binet also co-founded, co-directed, and curated La Petite Poule Noire, a gallery on the Boulevard des Filles du Calvaire in Paris dedicated to documentary photography, organising around 30 exhibitions as well as a monthly program of concerts, round tables, and workshops (2010–2015).

The PhotoBridge Project (2025–present)

In January 2025, Binet co-founded The PhotoBridge Project, a humanitarian visual-storytelling initiative, alongside Karen Lambert, a mediation and humanitarian-action specialist, and Roger Middleton, a conflict and peacebuilding analyst and founder of Sabi Insight. The organization  connects internationally published photojournalists with locally-led, community-based organizations in fragile and under-resourced regions, producing collaborative photo-storytelling portfolios intended to make these organizations' work visible to donors, philanthropic institutions, and the wider public. The project's stated rationale is that, within the roughly $600 billion U.S. philanthropic sector, local responders receive only 1–3% of funding — a gap PhotoBridge attributes in part to the invisibility of their work to funders.

Major Photographic Projects

The Arab Spring (2011–2012). Binet covered the uprisings in Egypt and Libya, publishing widely, including in the web edition of France Inter's "Interception" magazine, Newsweek, Le Nouvel Observateur, and VSD. With colleagues Lionel Charrier and Julien Daniel, he authored and coordinated Revolution — a live exhibition, book, and the film Up Rising Cairo, produced in partnership with the Musée de l'Élysée in Lausanne and shown at Visa pour l'Image in Perpignan (2011) and screened at the Images Singulières festival in Sète]. His Arab Spring coverage earned him two POYi (Picture of the Year International) awards in 2011.

Yemen (2015–2019). Working with MSF France, Binet produced a series of reportages on the siege of Aden, the north of the country, and the Hodeidah front between 2015 and 2018, with his work published in CNN, Libération, the France Inter website, La Libre Belgique, La Vie, and Le Temps, among others. His exhibition Le siège d'Aden was shown and screened at Visa pour l'Image in Perpignan in 2015, and a related Yemen exhibition, produced in partnership with MSF, toured to Toulouse, Dubai, Brussels, Paris, and Lyon the same year. He returned to Yemen in 2018–2019 to cover the Hodeidah front further, focusing on the MSF hospital in Mocha.

His Yemen work was later included in the collective MSF exhibition Reconstruction(s), shown at the Prix Bayeux Calvados-Normandie in October 2023. In 2017, 35 color digital prints from his 2015 Yemen reportage were acquired by the Bibliothèque de documentation internationale contemporaine (BDIC, now La Contemporaine).

Libya (2015–2017). In 2015, Binet worked with MSF's Amsterdam operational center on a global advocacy project documenting Libyan migrant detention centers, gaining rare access to several facilities. He returned to the subject in 2017 with a report for Libération on migrants' prisons in Tripoli, as well as coverage of rescue operations off the Libyan coast. Related work on the fears facing migrants was also published in Polka magazine

Migration in Europe (2016–2021). His reportage for Libération included coverage of migrants moving from Samos to Idomeni in Greece (2016) and the Lesbos migration crisis (2020). In 2021, he photographed the hardship faced by refugees in Haiti during the COVID-19 health crisis, for ECHO and Polka magazine, among others.

Democratic Republic of Congo (2018–2021). Binet covered the Kasaï region for France Inter and Libération in 2018, and in 2021 produced an advocacy reportage with Secours Catholique and the NGO Tournons La Page on land seizures linked to former president Joseph Kabila.

Ukraine (2021–2023). Binet documented civilian life along the front lines of the Donbas for Al Jazeera, publishing In Pictures: Europe's Forgotten War Grinds On (November 2021) and On Ukraine's Front Lines, Women Endure the War Alone (February 2022). Following Russia's full-scale invasion, he undertook eight reporting trips to Ukraine in 2022 for L'Obs, the Wall Street Journal, and Al Jazeera, and his photography appeared on the cover of Time magazine, in an issue reporting on "the war that may change the face of Europe". He was author and artistic director of the collective book Ukraine 02-2022–02-2023 (2023).

Other reportage. His career also includes coverage of Mali during the Azawad war for Les Inrockuptibles (2013), Typhoon Haiyan's aftermath in the Philippines for Paris Match (2013), a CNC-supported web documentary project on water scarcity in Mumbai (2011), and a project on the shores of Lake Edward in Uganda for Libération (2016).

Humanitarian and Institutional Commissions

Binet has designed, produced, and distributed photographic reports for numerous humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations Foundation (poliomyelitis, 2024, for which he received a UN Foundation Press Fellowship); the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (Darfur refugees in Chad, 2023); the French Red Cross (Ukraine, 2023; and Change(s), on climate change in Chad, 2019); Secours Catholique (DR Congo, 2021); the European Commission's ECHO directorate and the International Organization for Migration (the impact of COVID-19 on vulnerable populations across four continents, 2021); Action Against Hunger (the book and exhibition What I See, for the organisation's 40th anniversary, 2019; missions to Iraq, 2018; and Kasaï, DRC, 2018); and Médecins Sans Frontières (Yemen, 2015–2018; Libyan detention centres, 2015).

Artistic Direction and Curatorial Work

Beyond his own photography, Binet has worked extensively as an author, artistic director, and curator. He was author and artistic director of the collective Amnesty International book Ils furent foule soudain (2025) and of Ukraine 02-2022–02-2023 (2023). He curated the personal exhibition L'esprit des lieux at the Galerie Destin Sensible in Lille (Réseau Diagonal, 2023). He contributed to and coordinated the collective MYOP book on the 2017 French presidential election, Politique Paillettes, published by Robert Laffont. He has served as artistic director and exhibition manager of "MYOP in Arles" during the Rencontres de la Photographie in 2011, 2014, 2019, 2021, and 2022, and MYOP held screenings at the festival between 2007 and 2014.

Exhibitions

Binet's exhibitions and screenings include: L'atelier du sculpteur, on Giacometti, at the Paris 14th arrondissement town hall (2002); Revolution at Visa pour l'Image (2011); Changes, screened at the Tbilisi photo festival, Georgia (2011); Families Welcome at La Petite Poule Noire (2012); Le siège d'Aden and the wider Yemen exhibition touring Toulouse, Dubai, Brussels, Paris, and Lyon (2015), in partnership with MSF[2]; MYOP in London, a group show at Photo London's Seen Sixteen gallery (2015); L'Amérique, road trip at the Leica Gallery France (2016); Refugees in the Health Crisis at Visa pour l'Image and the Maison de la Radio in Paris (2021); the collective show The Map Is Not the Territory at KT&G Sangsang Madang in Seoul and the GoEun Museum of Photography in Busan (2022); L'esprit des lieux at Galerie Destin Sensible, Lille (2023); and Reconstruction(s) at the Prix Bayeux Calvados-Normandie (2023)[3]. Through The PhotoBridge Project, his work has also featured in SANCTUARY at the Fridman Gallery, New York (2026), and in installations at the Oxford Festival of the Arts. He has also appeared as a guest at the Étonnants Voyageurs literary festival in Saint-Malo, including a 2015 panel, "Carnets de route," alongside Bernard Ollivier, Cédric Gras, and Pauline Guéna.

Books

Binet's books include L'Amérique des écrivains (Éditions Robert Laffont, 2014), co-authored with novelist Pauline Guéna, which won the Grand Prix des lectrices de Elle in 2015; Politique Paillettes (Robert Laffont, 2017); What I See (Éditions Autrement, 2019), produced for Action Against Hunger's 40th anniversary; Ukraine 02-2022–02-2023 (2023); and Ils furent foule soudain (2025), for Amnesty International.

Awards and Recognition

Two Picture of the Year International (POYi) awards, 2011 (Arab Spring coverage).

Grand Prix des lectrices de Elle, 2015, for L'Amérique des écrivains.

BnF Radioscopie de la France grant, 2022.

UN Foundation Press Fellowship, 2024.

Time magazine cover, 2022, for Ukraine war coverage.

Institutional Collections

In 2017, 35 color digital prints from Binet's 2015 Yemen reportage were acquired by the BDIC (now La Contemporaine, Université Paris Nanterre).

Personal Life

Binet's partner is novelist Pauline Guéna, with whom he co-authored L'Amérique des écrivains; the couple have four children.