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A brief history of sight

What does it mean to be mobile? What type of relationship do we have with space, with the places we pass through? Whether they are mental or physical, whether they refer to a geographical or social position, how can photography provide tools to explore these territories? The starting point of my approach lies at the crossroads of these questions.

The notion of mobility appears to be taken for granted when applied to Gypsy, Roma or Travelers people. Representations still reinforce the nomadism as an exclusive defining trait, even though most people have nothing to do with these practices. Furthermore, it’s fair to say that no other social group in France has suffered this many injunctions to immobility since the end of the XIXth century. It seems to me that the landscapes in which these these people live today, landscapes imposed on them in the form of these « aire d’accueil » or designated sites, bear the mark of these constraints. One thing in particular strikes the eye once in such a site: the gaze can never wander very far, one can rarely see the horizon.

For several years now, I have used photography to create a visual archive of these spaces. This impulse found its meaning in a simple observation: how is it possible that, as a citizen, the opportunity to cross these spaces, which are designed as enclaves, never presents itself? Trying to answer this question through photography amounts to questioning the meaning and political power that representations, particularly visual ones, carry. By what they show, but also by what they do not show, images dissect, scrutinize, and paradoxically make visible what is not. Photographing the landscapes in which Travelers live in France, without photographing the Travelers themselves, necessarily refers to the invisibility that they experience. And this reversal of point of view is then also intended to be read as an anthropology of the here and oneself, no longer of the other and elsewhere.

In between these images, which seem to put us at a distance, there are stories, memories, shared by Travelers I met during my travels. These stories are the precise manifestation of our possible neighborly relationships. Above all, they are a sign that these spaces, cold and sometimes source of humiliation, do not long resist the sensitivity of human gestures and words.

This project has been funded by the french Ministery of Culture.