La Dame de la Mer, 1998
Anita Conti is an exceptional woman. Writer, photographer and first woman oceanographer, she made her mark in the very male world of fishing. In 1935, she participated in various campaigns on the first French oceanographic ship and then, before the Second World War, on a trawler-morator in the Barents Sea and in Spitsbergen for 100 days. Her missions permitted her to publish reports and articles illustrated by her photographs taken with her Rolleiflex camera; she did not fail to denounce the over-exploitation of the oceans. During the war, she obtained permission to embark as a Navy photographer on minesweepers in the English Channel and the North Sea, photographing attempts to clear mines. During the years of occupied France, Anita Conti contributed to the improvement of fishing conditions on the coasts of West Africa; in Senegal, she set up fish drying stations and created a shark fishery in Guinea. Anita Conti was accepted and respected by the fishermen and sailors of the Royale, whom she photographed like a reporter, with daring points of view (dives and counter dives that let us experience deep-sea fishing from the inside). In 1952, she embarked for several months on the trawler Bois Rosé in campaign on the banks of Newfoundland, off Canada. Her aura became legendary, and the sailors nicknamed her The Lady of the Sea. To those who asked her if she was a tomboy, Anita Conti liked to answer: “No, I am a successful woman”.
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