The photographer Bruno Fert has captured the interior spaces of makeshift shelters of the migrants and refugees in Europe’s jungle camps. These men and women have recreated a home, with souvenirs from their former life, objects that improve their everyday lives or express their most important dreams, like the Union Jack displayed on a shack wall in Calais. These images portray exile and migration. They tell us about these men and women who are searching for a better future, about their aspirations and personalities. Some of the makeshift accommodation photographed no longer exists, destroyed in particular during the Calais jungle eviction. Only these images remain, troubling proof of a brief stay, an important stage in singular lives.
Anne Guion
Bruno Fert is born in 1971. He studied at the Ecole Nationale des Arts Décoratif and in New York where he started photography with a photo-essay on the live of the homeless of the Brooklyn Bridge. Then, he realized many reportages in the Middle East and Africa including "Being 20 years old in Palestine" (Bourse du Talent Award in 2002). Bruno Fert seeks to reveal political or social issues by showing them from a singular point of view.
Housing: shelter, hut or ruins, are often seen in its photographs like in "The tents in the city" (Third prize of the World Press Photo in 2007) or "Les Absents", his work on the Palestinian villages destroyed in 1948 distinguished by the Roger Pic Award in 2013 and the Neuflize Award in 2016.