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Thomas Jorion, Traces of empire

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When I first started this fascinating project, I could not have imagined the many adventures that awaited me and the even more unforeseeable encounters that were going to shift my perception of the world.

The history of the French colonial empire is ambivalent. A sensitive subject for some, it is full of adventures and imaginary stories for others. The successive conquests of the First Empire, which stretched from the Americas to Senegal and India, then the Second Empire which extended from Africa as far as South-east Asia, allowed the realisation of many destinies. We can imagine these men at the beginning of the discovery of the world, leaving their countries and families for a future beyond the seas. An unknown world full of promises was opening up to them.

Moving on to the period of settlement and construction. Each colony developed an architectural style appropriate to the geographic location, sometimes blending in with the local style to give birth to a new architectural language. So this was the time of experimentation with the latest styles then in fashion and new techniques for the housing environment. The climatic constraints and the use of local materials stimulated the minds of the architects and engineers who, far from Metropolitan France, had a lot more freedom.

While the political and social order of that world came to an end, the visible imprint of these exchanges and the French presence beyond its borders would remain. From Casablanca to Pondicherry, via Saint-Louis in Senegal, Shanghai, Algiers or Port-au-Prince, these vestiges are both modest and grand. Some of the buildings and constructions have survived over the years and still recount their stories. Getting a second lease of life after independence, they have rarely been unoccupied. But because of the costs of maintenance, many have disappeared under the ravages of both time and man. I wanted to capture them on my negatives so that the stories they contain could live on.

I conceived this series and arranged my journeys according to documentary research carried out earlier in Paris. I then produced these photographs exclusively with a “4×5” large format view camera and colour films.

Through my encounters and discoveries on the ground, I came to understand that history is often written by a small elite. That the people, in the broad sense and of which I am part, lack the understanding of others in a game played by this same elite. So I was surprised by the reassuring approach of the native people to this bygone period. It made me realise that the choice between friendship and repentance towards another people is only that of this small political class. The man in the street – whether he lives in Paris, Hanoi, Dakar, Phnom Penh, Algiers or Part-au-Prince – doesn’t have anything to do with courtly games of intrigue. He hopes to live in peace and quiet.

My taste for adventure, the traces of times past and remembered places initiated this project. However, with the passage of time, I realised that these ruins could not be considered just like any other ruins. I could not limit myself to showing only their beauty and their aesthetics, because they are laden with the terrible weight of history and domination of one people over another.

So, little by little, the project appeared to me as an opportunity to tackle a subject so often disregarded, though it is actually a source of much tension at both national and international levels. When history weighs so heavily on the present, it is worth knowing it in order to analyse its consequences. We are the heirs of a history whose visible part is made of ruins that evoke the vanity of supremacist peoples, and whose invisible part comes back to haunt our modern crises.

Thomas Jorion

Thomas Jorion, Vestiges d’empire
From 6th April to 6th May 2017
Librairie Maupetit
142 La Canebière
13001 Marseille
France

http://www.maupetitlibraire.fr/agenda.php?agenda=2485

The book is published by La Martinière – 59€

http://www.editionsdelamartiniere.fr/

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