Sapeurs exhibition: Fashion with a message

A sapeur poses at the opening night of the 21st Francophonie Festival in Beijing, March 9, 2016. [Photo by Ruan Fan/chinadaily.com.cn]

This group of people were captured by Boudouin Mouanda, a Congolese photographer. First spotting the sapeurs in a Paris metro in 2007, he traced the sapeurs to Brazzaville, where the S.A.P.E. culture originated.

"I realized that S.A.P.E. played a very important role in Brazzaville in 1998-1999, after the civil war. There wasn't anything left to do in the town; everything was shut down," said Mouanda in an interview with leica-camera.com.

Mouanda said that the sapeurs recreated the atmosphere that is part of Congolese day-to-day life and showed the traumatized population that hope is still there with them.