Twenty years ago, French photographer Yves Monteil was driving in Senegal when he passed a military cemetery in Thiaroye, in the suburbs of Dakar. Friends told him it was the burial site of Senegalese soldiers massacred by the French army during the Second World War, shot for demanding unpaid wages. The story stuck with Monteil, and in 2020 he picked up his camera and began digging into the archives.
The massacre at Thiaroye took place on 1 December, 1944, when French colonial troops opened fire on West African soldiers who had just returned from Europe, where they had been fighting for France.
