Colony - Lawless areas in France

In 2014, the Fondation Carmignac wanted to support and promote investigative photography in areas outside the spotlight, focusing on France and more specifically on areas that have become lawless: places of political, legal or socio-economic deregulation where the laws of the Republic no longer have authority. This year's laureate is self-taught photographer Christophe Gin, who has been exploring French Guiana since 2001.

Apart from the towns on the Atlantic coast (Cayenne, Kourou and Saint-Laurent (Cayenne, Kourou and Saint-Laurent du Maroni), the interior of French Guiana was not integrated into the department until 1969. Entirely made up of tropical forests villages cut off from the rest of the world, this uncontrollable territory has experienced integration and development: unemployment, a dead-end education system the school system, forced idleness and alcoholism among the indigenous population.

For “Colonie”, an ironical name, Christophe Gin focused on the largest of the French departments, consisting of the former colony of Inini and the coastal district of Cayenne. Between December 2014 and June 2015, he crossed abandoned villages and majestic, devastated landscapes, taking five trips. He rubbed shoulders with traditional chiefs and clandestine miners, magnifying the bends of the Maroni river like they were tired backs, all in aching black and white.

Far from Kourou’s high-tech Guiana and its space launchers, he gave new meaning to Albert Londre’s quip: “Guiana is an Eldorado but it looks as if we’ve just landed.”

Social hell as seen from mainland France, it is unfortunately very easy to reduce French Guyana to this caricature.

Personally, having worked in the region for the last fifteen years, I see French Guiana more as a mosaic of exceptional areas, often governed by their own codes and laws. In this context, republican law remains a figment of the imagination, where usage rights, customary law and French law coexist and sometimes clash.

A legacy of the colonial period, French Guiana obtained the status of French department in 1946, but this departmentalisation only concerned the coastal zone. It wasn't until 1969 that the interior was incorporated into the department as part of a new administrative division of the entire territory. Its inhabitants were gradually assimilated as the administrative system moved inland.

This is precisely the area I went to photograph for the Fondation Carmignac. The interior of French Guiana is landlocked and lagging far behind in terms of development, and republican continuity is still very uncertain.

It's very easy to stop at an observation and draw ‘truths’ from it. Personally, I find it difficult to photograph without showing the context. To carry out this project, it was important for me to avoid a Manichean vision of the place that would simply pit the good guys against the bad guys. So I decided to return to French Guiana and focus on different inland communes that are characteristic of contemporary Guianese realities."

Christophe Gin

• 

  Chapelle des Petits Augustins - Beaux-Arts de Paris, Paris

  05 Nov — 05 Dec 2015

COLONY, Christophe Gin

This book presents 15 years of photographic work to present French Guiana beyond the clichés commonly conveyed by the news and the media.

Texts in French and English by Christophe Gin and Christophe Deloire, Director General of Reporters Sans Frontières.

Kehrer Verlag, 2015

Hard cover

120 pages

€49,90

• Visit the publisher's website

Chaired by Christophe Deloire, Secretary General of Reporters Without Borders, the jury of the 6th edition of the Carmignac photojournalism Award was composed of:

Nicolas Bourriaud, Art Critic, former Director of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris

Patrick Chauvel, Photojournalist

éric Chol, President and Editor of Courrier International

Nigel Hurst, Director of the Saatchi Gallery, London

Marie Sumalla, Photo Editor at Le Monde