Alfred Bertrand was born in 1856 in Geneva. It is said that his three passions were travel, photography and Calvinism. As an explorer, he left to join the Protestant missionaries in Africa in the hope of making the "savages" good Christians.
By setting out to explore the world, Bertrand could exercise his three passions:he traveled to evangelize and took many photographs to create memories. He also brought many ethnographic objects back to Europe; these are now in the Ethnographic Museum of Geneva.
It is likely that, like the explorers of that time, Alfred Bertrand participated in the vision of the unknown made voluntarily more exotic, and that these photos were not exactly faithful to the first image of the natives exposed to travelers. Especially since the continent was still unknown and uncertain when Alfred Bertrand went there, and it was important to show it to Europeans. But he also photographed the missionaries and other explorers who left with him.
In 1909, Alfred Bertrand became the president of the Geography Society of Geneva, founded in 1858 and which focuses on the progress of geographical science.
Inhabitant of Geneva, there is still in this city Bertrand Park , which he bequeathed to the State after his death. Alfred Bertrand died in 1924 in Geneva, his birthplace.