From March 2012 to October 2019, (alone at first and with Helen toward the end), I made what you might call a kind of "Tour de France" by bike - 20,500 km over twenty months on the road.
The idea from the beginning was to see a bit of the country, its inhabitants, to continue the research started in Spain on agriculture a few years earlier and begin a report on energy production by way of the country's nuclear power plants for example, etc.
I also wanted to do a little documentation on the administrative detention centers listed on the official website of the French government (https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F2780) such as :
"Administrative detention makes it possible to keep in a closed place a foreigner who is the subject of an expulsion decision, pending his forcible return. Detention is decided by the administration, then possibly extended by a judge when the immediate departure of the foreigner from France is impossible. It cannot exceed 90 days (except in the case of terrorist activities). The selected foreigner has certain rights and can receive help from associations."
In Spain, among the undocumented workers in intensive agriculture and to a lesser extent in West Africa and Morocco I had heard about it. It was often in disagreeable terms, not to say traumatic. Even though I knew that without a press card or specific request from a newspaper or an institution it would be impossible for me to get inside the CRAs, we thought that it would not be without interest to photograph from the outside, as well as their immediate surroundings.
The project (to use a modern expression) is to document what "a common citizen" could see of these places. So I did not do any research or try to get in touch with associations for example. I simply referred to the list of administrative detention centers in metropolitan France in Wikipedia's online encyclopedia. Note that this document dates from 2012, the data (locations, capacities, etc.) may be different now.
I often went there with my bike loaded with luggage and stayed for about an hour. Spending more time on the spot would have really ruined my morale, and there's the fact that it took a lot of energy to find these places. They are often hidden, trivialized, so that the locals themselves often had no idea what I was talking about. And since I was not equipped with a smartphone to geo-locate the site, once I had spotted it I often had to leave quickly to find a place to put my little tent for the night ...
During this time I was rarely in contact with other people. Because, apart from the coming and going of police cars, not much is happening. I note that three times I was questioned by the police and once even taken to the station.
Maybe the photos taken at Nice bear some criticism (such as mixing things up) and of course I questioned this during the shooting. If we have decided to keep them it is because it was part of our modest goal: to photograph the CRAs and the signs that we would see around them.
To be complete, it would have been necessary to go to Guadeloupe, Reunion, Guyana, Mayotte; but in addition to being off budget it would have exploded the carbon footprint of the Tour!
At the end of this series, we added some photos that were always done during this journey, sometimes by chance. These are people (Kosovars, Eritreans, Sudanese, Ethiopians) who certainly know about the existence of these centers or related situations.
At one point I considered returning to Calais, when the evacuation of the famous "Jungle" (makeshift camps of people trying to move to England) in 2016 came to mind, but I finally abstained considering the very large number of journalists and photographers that were already there and the difficulties I had at the time with one member of a small association and especially with smugglers. In addition it, should be added, the police!
June 26, 2019, the day I finish this introduction there appeared in the newspaper Liberation a forum and a jointly signed letter. Here it is by way of introduction:
La Lettre : https://www.youscribe.com/BookReader/Index/3059480/?documentId=3462215
Finally here is the document that served as my itinerary on retentions centers in France:
https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_des_centres_de_rétention_administrative_en_France
From March 2012 to October 2019, (alone at first and with Helen toward the end), I made what you might call a kind of "Tour de France" by bike - 20,500 km over twenty months on the road.
The idea from the beginning was to see a bit of the country, its inhabitants, to continue the research started in Spain on agriculture a few years earlier and begin a report on energy production by way of the country's nuclear power plants for example, etc.
I also wanted to do a little documentation on the administrative detention centers listed on the official website of the French government (https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F2780) such as :
"Administrative detention makes it possible to keep in a closed place a foreigner who is the subject of an expulsion decision, pending his forcible return. Detention is decided by the administration, then possibly extended by a judge when the immediate departure of the foreigner from France is impossible. It cannot exceed 90 days (except in the case of terrorist activities). The selected foreigner has certain rights and can receive help from associations."
In Spain, among the undocumented workers in intensive agriculture and to a lesser extent in West Africa and Morocco I had heard about it. It was often in disagreeable terms, not to say traumatic. Even though I knew that without a press card or specific request from a newspaper or an institution it would be impossible for me to get inside the CRAs, we thought that it would not be without interest to photograph from the outside, as well as their immediate surroundings.