The wild and precious life of an ancient equine species

He also said “yes” to relearning photography, to allowing it to take over his life, and to teaching his craft at workshops in Santa Fe as well as Cuba, Mexico, Peru, France, and elsewhere.

And in 2015, Bonanno said “yes” to a former student, a photojournalist who invited him to co-lead a workshop with her in France, south of Arles, where lakes and lagoons lick the Rhône Delta and the Mediterranean Sea. There, Bonanno found an old community of wetland cowboys who speak an ancient tongue and raise saltwater horses and small but fierce bulls.

Bonanno fell in love with the region and its people — as well as with their way of life, which he now worries is on the brink. He promised himself he would help educate a wider audience about this culture through his photography, starting with publishing his photo book, Horse of the Sea.

The horses of the Camargue, as readers learn early on in the book, are a venerable and protected breed with a light grey or white coat, and one of the oldest horse breeds in the world. Their presence in the Camargue in southern France dates back to several centuries BCE. Their exact origin is unknown, but according to one story, le cheval de Camargue (the horse of Camargue) was born from the froth that lingers on the surface of the sea, or in French, from l’écume de mer.

Legend has it that thousands of years ago, a man escaped an angry bull by running into the sea, only to be saved by a stallion who surged out of the foam atop a wave. The stallion told the man that he would never be the man’s servant, but his friend.

“Most of them [Camargue horses] are smaller, bigger than a pony, but they’re not big horses at all,” Bonanno says over coffee one cold January afternoon. “What I found fascinating about them was that they have very wide hooves, and they’re very, very comfortable in water, which is not very stable, and is mucky and muddy and slippery.”

Bonnano worked with horses in the National Park Service and had since become a respected equine photographer. His Hooves & Dust series, for example, portrays horses of the American Southwest at their most majestic; so much so that Bonanno is sometimes asked to teach equine photography, and, on occasion, is sent into the field, here in New Mexico and elsewhere.

“In the Carson National Forest, there’s still a herd of mustangs, and I was asked to go up there several years ago, with one of the people who’s working with a research group, and try to get some photographs,” he says. “I did get a few photographs, but it was not easy. And I wasn’t able to get a lot, because they’re very shy.”

The horses of the Camargue were more obliging. They may not be as wild as New Mexico’s mustangs, but they are considered semi-wild or feral. And yet, they are far from shy.

“They would come up to you, friendly and curious,” Bonanno says, recalling his first trip to the Camargue. “I’d be standing there with my camera with a couple of students. Next thing I know, I got those horses right here.” He gestures at the space between his neck and shoulder where a horse would put its head. “They have no fear of people.”

To this day, Camargue horses are born in the wild, never in captivity, and spend their lives on vast expanses of flat wetland. They live in herds, or manades, as they’re known in the area, which consist of a dozen individuals, mostly mares and foals, plus a stallion. The manades are looked after, more often than not from afar, by gardians, whose name loosely means “horse herder” in the Occitan language or langue d’oc. The gardians live by three fundamental values: faith, hope, and charity.

Gardians never ride mares, and they return to the wild those stallions who don’t pass the fear test in front of a Camargue bull. The stallions who do pass help gardians herd cattle and champion bulls. In the summer, select bulls (bióus) partake in traditional arena events called courses camarguaises, where the bull is never harmed and often eclipses his human opponent (raseteur) in fame.

Horse of the Sea includes dozens of striking black and white and color photographs of horses, gardians, and bulls. When asked how he came to choose which photos to render in black and white and which in color, he points at the black and white of two stallions sparring, one white and the younger one darker. Had the photograph been in color, the viewer might have missed the line that differentiates the horses, as well as the adversarial feeling to their separate movements.

“Sometimes, color plays an important part of the composition,” Bonanno says. “Other times, color actually distracts from the compositional element.”

Bonanno also elaborates on his earlier tip about shooting wide. “You want to be able to shoot fast, you want to be able to shoot wide, and create your final composition from within the wider shot,” he says. “If you try to compose through the viewfinder, while they run, you’re not going to get it — you’re going to cut off a head or a tail or something.”

And the secret to living that wild and precious life?

Continue learning. “The more I shoot, the more critical I become of my compositions,” he says. “I think that I actually have become a better horse photographer. However, what I really have learned is the appreciation of that gardian culture and those powerful, wonderful horses.” ◀

Ania Hull is a journalist and writer based in Albuquerque. She writes about the arts, the environment, book culture, film culture, immigration, and travel.