Claude Iverné, photographer and doctoral student in the history of photography in Sudan, draws in words and pictures the portrait of an exceptional man: a joiner, a writer, a film-maker, a printer, a publisher, a perfectionist photographer and above all an activist, self-taught, rightly nicknamed by those around him The Gifted Man. Rashid Mahdi (1923-2008) worked with an 18 × 24 cm stand camera, composing sets and light for his portraits and retouching negatives and prints by hand.