# 3
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.
Invitations to contemplate
This image is part of the collection
Keep exploring
- We would ask to transform and reform the modalities of membership by which the city (cité) belongs to the state, as in a developing Europe or in international juridical structures still dominated by the inviolable rule of state sovereignty […] This should no longer be the ultimate horizon for citie …
What if everything is entangled?
In the chapter of Please do not show my face 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.
How could we imagine alternatives to Europe as a centre of power? Where could we speak from? What language could we use to describe ourselves when stripped of any defined role in the ecosystem? Subaltern of subaltern, do we possess a codified language—and if so, where do we speak from while trying to hide from any repressive authority, any uninvited power of depiction? What is the difference between a protected wetland and a jungle?
of our Imagination
