synopsis
The starting point of this project is in the Calais jungle, on the eve of the shantytown's evacuation in 2016. Jean-Michel André continued this photographic work for three years, in France, Italy, Spain, and Tunisia. Everywhere, he encountered refugees seeking shelter. Women, children, and men gathered in the hope of making the final crossing. This project invites us on a journey, that of exile, of wandering, but also of hope and resistance. The writing of Jean-Michel André and Wilfried N'Sondé questions the relationship with the other and questions the notions of real and imaginary borders.
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technical information
Publisher : Actes Sud
Year : 2021
Language : french, english
Pages : 110
Dimensions : 28.5 x 22.2 cm
Year : 2021
Language : french, english
Pages : 110
Dimensions : 28.5 x 22.2 cm
about Jean-Michel André
Born in 1976, Jean-Michel André graduated in photography from the Gobelins School. His work is represented by the Sit Down Gallery (Paris).
For the past ten years, he has pursued a creative photographic approach, at the intersection of visual and documentary interpretations. His approach is based on a political and poetic vision of the territory, examining its boundaries, memory, and evolution.
He also explores the notion of circulation, particularly that of economic, financial, and migratory flows. Questions related to absence, lack, and reparation are common threads throughout his series.
Having spent a large part of his life outside France, in Spain, the African continent, and the Caribbean, he can also affirm that travel nourishes his work without claiming to describe a country or its inhabitants. He prefers to take the back roads: revealing the shadows and inviting the exploration of an intimate geography.
In Dos à la mer, a series set in the Caribbean, supported in 2010 by a creation grant from the DRAC Martinique, he photographs the collapse of a development model based on tourism. In L’autre pays (2010-2015), he undertakes open-air archaeology of the explosion of the real estate bubble in Spain. With Borders (2016-2020), he provocatively intertwines portraits and fragments of landscapes to question the notion of borders and their wounds. This work is accompanied by writings from Wilfried N'Sondé. In 2021, Borders was published by Actes Sud and exhibited at the Rencontres d’Arles, at the Sit Down gallery, and then at Paris Photo. In 2022, Jean-Michel André was among the winners of the Grande commande photographique launched by the BnF and the Ministry of Culture to realize his project À bout de souffle, awarded in 2023 with the Maison Blanche prize.
Room 207, his latest creation, will be published by Actes Sud in October 2024 and presented at the Hospice Comtesse Museum in Lille. This project received support from the National Center for Visual Arts, the Institute for Photography of the Hauts-de-France, and the Mediterranean Center for Photography.Jean-Michel André showcases his work through exhibitions, residencies, and publications, both in France and abroad. His photographs are part of the collections of the National Library of France, the Neuflize OBC Foundation, the House of Arts of Léman, and the Clément Foundation.source: author's website.
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Publisher : Actes Sud
Year : 2021
Language : french, english
Pages : 110
Dimensions : 28.5 x 22.2 cm
Year : 2021
Language : french, english
Pages : 110
Dimensions : 28.5 x 22.2 cm