The Sarr Collection

Dawit L. Petros



Born in Eritrea in 1972, Dawit L. Petros is internationally recognized for a research-driven practice examining migration, colonial histories, memory, and transnational identity. Working across photography, film, installation, and archival inquiry, he has developed one of the most intellectually rigorous voices in contemporary photography, combining scholarship with visual poetry to reconsider how histories are written, how borders are constructed, and how movement shapes our understanding of ourselves and others.

Petros holds an MFA in Visual Art from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University and completed the Whitney Independent Study Program. Winner of the 2025 Scotiabank Photography Award, he has exhibited at Tate Modern, the Bamako Encounters African Photography Biennale, and leading institutions across North America, Europe, and Africa. His work is held in significant public and private collections, including The Walther Collection.

French Photographer Denis Darzacq graduated from the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs in 1986 and joined Agence VU in 1997.

He began his career as a set photographer for Satyajit Ray, Jacques Rivette, and Chantal Akerman, then contributed to Libération and the French national press for two decades. A 1999 Ministry of Culture commission on French youth opened the line of inquiry that runs through his major series: La Chute (2006), Hyper (2007-2010), and Act (2009-2011). The 2010s brought a turn toward abstraction with Recomposition I and II, Contreformes, and Absence, alongside video work including La Ronde, made with choreographer Thierry Thieû Niang.

Darzacq won the Altadis Prize in 2000, the 1st prize in the Stories category at the 2007 World Press Photo Awards for La Chute, and the Niépce Prize in 2012, one of the most prestigious distinctions in French photography. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Centre Pompidou (Musée national d’art moderne), the Fonds national d’art contemporain (FNAC), the Musée Nicéphore Niépce, the Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration, the Galerie du Château d’Eau in Toulouse, the FRAC Haute-Normandie, the Caldic Collection in the Netherlands, the agnès b. collection, and the Marin Karmitz collection, among others.