Description
A 60 page full color book, contains a series of interviews and photographs documenting life inside of Camp de la Linière during the winter of 2016 in Dunkerque, France.
For 13 months between March 2016 and April 2017 in Grande Synthe, Dunkirque, a small city on the northern coast of France a make-shift camp housing undocumented asylum seekers called Camp La Linière existed. It was initially built up by MSF (Medicine Sans Frontier) and the Mayor of Grande Synthe. However the overwhelming majority of support for the camp’s residents was provided by various teams of self-organized, grass-roots volunteers from across Europe.
Home to approximately 2000 people from Kurdistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Iraq, Syria and Pakistan. All of whom where gathered in this place with the hope of crossing the English Channel by clandestine means, in an attempt to start a new life in the UK.
Informally known as “the jungle”, the Dunkirque jungle was one of a series of informal refugee encampments that existed across northern France from 2015 until 2017. Just 50kms north in Calais there was an even larger encampments that was evicted and demolished by the French authorities in October 2016.
The camp in Grande Synthe was destroyed by fire in April 2017. Tension inside the camp due to over-overcrowding and poor living conditions eventually led a riot. Fires spread quickly through the make-shift dwellings, riot police entered and the camp was cleared out. In the days following people where put on buses and the authorities attempted to disperse the majority of people away from the coastal area.
After 4 months of volunteering in the camp helping to organize food supplies, distribution of donated clothing, shoes and firewood I decided to spend my last few days at La Linière documenting the situation inside of the camp. I collected a series of photographs and interviews which are presented here. All of my friends gave me consent to publish their images and words, and photographs are placed in random order to protect people’s identities. All of the interviews
were recorded in people’s mother tongue and then later translated into English.
The experience of working in La Linière was something special and at times very emotional. Gaining some insight into the price that civilians pay during war. Seeing and hearing stories of the variety of ways that people can be stripped of their human rights. I am left with a stronger feeling that ‘some are more equal than others” and that the gap is vast between the lives that most of us enjoy and the struggles that face those people who end up becoming one of “the others”.
Today this process of dehumanization is continuing across the globe. With this in mind, my intention with this work is to inspire people who have the privilege of a safe and secure existence to open their eyes and their hearts to the needs of the less fortunate
“The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free.”
– Maya Angelou
