Photo-exhibition about the Calais Jungle at Paris Centre Pompidou

Calais, bearing witness to the Jungle is the powerful photo exhibition on offer at the Centre Pompidou from October 16, 2019 to February 24, 2020. By inviting AFP, photographer Bruno Serralongue (author of a photo documentary on the Calais Jungle) and the inhabitants of this camp, at the heart of this exile crisis, the Centre Pompidou offers us a powerful testimony to France's contemporary history.

For a number of years now, the Centre Pompidou has been giving photographers a voice throughfree exhibitions in its photography cabinet. After theexhibition Photographie arme de classe, here is Calais - testifying to the "Jungle", on view from October 16, 2019 until February 24, 2020.

Intended by the museum as "an experiment", the exhibition offers three different approaches to the situation experienced by refugees and exiles settled in the "Calais Jungle", but also the situation experienced by the exiles themselves.

For these three approaches, the Centre Pompidou turned to Agence France Presse, which produced some of the images broadcast by the media, to artist Bruno Serralongue, author of the documentary project Calais (2006-2018), and also to the inhabitants of the Calais Jungle.

The largest, the AFP section, is produced in cooperation withAgence France Presse and contains interviews with the agency's photographers who covered the events, such as Philippe Huguen, Olivier Morin, the editor-in-chief of the France photo division, and Virginie Grognou, deputy video editor-in-chief, but also with other media personalities, such as Nicolas Jimenez, photo director of Le Monde. The section is a fine example of media images that "focus more on events than on everyday life, since they have to inform and get noticed in an environment where grabbing the public's attention is becoming more and more of a competition".

Then, in a different space, we follow Bruno Serralongue, the photographer who first sensed the secret investment of places in camps in 2005. He documents their attempts to reach England, from the installation of the Calais Jungle to its dismantling in 2016. His photographs offer an alternative to media images, bringing us closer to the historical picture.

Finally, the most touching of all, the section featuring testimonials fromJungle residents, which takes a photographic look back at the Jungle's high points, experienced from the inside. The photos and videos show another reality, the opposite of the one presented by the media, the reality of exile and migration. Some of these amateur photographers have gone on to become recognized artists, like the young Iranian author Babak Inanlou, who has made a film dedicated to reflecting on the images of the "Jungle".

Alongside these photos, a film by German artist Andreas Langfeld brings together testimonies from the associative world.