Every image in the Alterlibrary collection is intended as a quote, an excerpt of a larger discourse. But every image also stands as a matter that could undergo a series of operations and alterations. Therefore, images are renewable sources.
Operations: Extraction and Collection. Image alteration: none.
This is an original photographic image extracted from my series called Please do not show my face. It is a collection of photographs divided into six chapters. All images have been shot in Calais and Dunkerque migration camps, across the cities and in the so-called jungles. Please do not show my face is not a documentary series on migration or migrants (but no one can control how images can collect arguments)—this work aims mainly to be an essay on the concept of the gaze. In using documentary photography materials, it interrogates the boundaries of visibility, authorship, and power of representation.
In the chapter devoted to thresholds, each image probes the notion of a threshold as a political act for those possessing the means of representation, compelling us to ask how far we can—or should—go in portraying others. Simultaneously, migration—moving from one place, status, or idea to another—is inextricably linked to thresholds and is never neutral: having, or being denied, the power to cross them determines who can move freely and who remains excluded.
This image has been selected as part of one of the collections of Alterlibrary, titled Ecosystem Europe.
In it, we find potential inspirations to imagine an Ecosystemic Continent.
In creating this collection, we reflected on the multiple principles that inform the life of ecosystems. We then asked ourselves how these Ecosystemic Principles might infiltrate our Imaginary, challenging our conventional ways of thinking and helping us envision new forms of coexistence and cohabitation within our societies.
Here are some of the reflections that emerged during the creation of ‘Ecosystem Europe.