Resilience.
During the Winter of 2022, I had the opportunity to work at the Association Cèdres, which supports people in exile. Men, women, elders, and children who through a long and hard journey had reached France in the hope of a future.
The Association provides them with a space in the North of Paris, where they could find support for the relentless labyrinth of administrative procedures, participate in cultural activities, or simply spend an afternoon recharging their phones, tired bodies, and worried minds.
In January 2022, Joseph Aimard, started a photographic project titled Through their eyes. The idea was to offer people the opportunity to express themselves through photography. So that they could speak through the camera without the need of language; so that they could express their voice, vision, and individuality; so that people would know.
I became a part of the project when it began. Within 2 weeks, we had a group of about 10 hesitant volunteers, aged between 24 and 30, from Guinea, Chad, Mali, Algeria, and Ivory Coast. Most of them had never had the chance to attend school and it was the very first time they were part of any kind of artistic group.
We met every weekend for 3 months, going around the city, to learn and capture images. They were also given cameras to continue their visual exploration during the week. We created the collective “Cèdres photographes”, brought together by photography as well as friendship.
The photographs here are my side of this human story.
As trust slowly grew, Joseph and I got to know about their narratives. The long months of cross-border walks, the torture and sticking presence of death within Libyan prisons, the fear of jumping on a boat in the dark of a night and to see yourself surrounded by deep waters when you’ve never been on the sea.
We found ourselves wordless facing their resilience and courage, knowing the painful truths of suffering, loss, disillusionment, they were carrying.
With every week, we became more aware that photography had turned into an alibi for this group to gather, share, laugh, and support each other. For them to find themselves within the urban multitude of Paris; to switch from their imposed status of a marginalised migrant to the chosen one of a photography novice.
They had dreams, many. R., a 24 years old from Algeria, made ends meet cycling in the streets of the city of lights as an Uber delivery. Strongly believing that differences exist to make everyone richer from their encounters, he was also training to become a mediateur. He was crucially missing the contact with nature and if life had given him a choice, he would have liked to be a forest ranger. T., a 30 years old and from Guinea, was a taxi driver in his home country and had to flee because of political turmoil. As he was following the debates ahead of the French presidential elections of 2022, he confessed that his dream would have been to become a welder.
As photographers, each of them had their preferences. They did not know much about framing, structure, light, but they knew what they liked to photograph.
Yet, after the time spent together, each was going back to their daily struggles of finding work and a roof for the night, along with the overwhelming and sticking weight of loneliness.
“We are blessed to live”, “Always behave according to what is right”, “Keep fighting", you can never afford to stop” - they kept repeating to each other.
During winter 2022, I had been confronted every day with this fact that as many places on the planet, Paris was the theater of parallel realities. There were invisible yet clear lines. Running along the same streets and facades. Those divergent realities evolved side by side but would never meet. I was fortunate that my path ran into those who would otherwise have been so far.
Rich of the strengths H., R., M.L., O., T., R., S., K. had shown and shared with me, I was left grateful but with new questions.
Where do we go from here?
