Borders

In Borders, Jean-Michel André questions the notion of border, a question which takes the form of a wandering, whose starting point is in the Jungle of Calais on the eve of the evacuation of the slum in 2016. André pursued the project over three years in France, Italy, Spain and Tunisia—anywhere there were refugees in search of shelter, anywhere there were men, women and children brought together by the same hope of crossing one final stretch of water.

With these images of the Jungle, he mixes various fragments of landscapes to form a visual palimpsest. These silent places never cease to signify partition, rupture and desolation and exhale the vertigo of emptiness. Desires from elsewhere become dust and smoke in these spaces where the human figure, photographed isolated and from behind, is located on a threshold, between reality and imagination, memory and present.

With accompanying texts by writer Wilfried N'Sondé, whose novels follow similar themes, together André and N'Sondé combine their disciplines, the creation being Borders which is neither a linear series nor narrative—rather a collection of works.