In Let the Sun Beheaded Be, photographer Gregory Halpern focuses on the French Caribbean archipelago of Guadeloupe, a French overseas region with a complicated and violent colonial history.

Renowned for his photographic meditations on place, Halpern presents a compelling portrait of Guadeloupe and its inhabits, focusing on local histories and experiences. Let the Sun Beheaded Be commingles life and death, nature and culture, and beauty and decay in enigmatic color images of the archipelago’s residents and lush landscape, as well as monuments related to the brutality of its past.

The project is part of Immersion, a program of the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès, in partnership with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson.