Photosensitive - I Go Where I Write

Hugo Clarence Janody stayed for a week at the Nédonchel Reception and Assessment Center. This is a temporary shelter where migrants in transit through Calais are temporarily housed and provided with information and guidance by outreach workers from the OFII —the French Office for Immigration and Integration (OFII)—and the AUDASSE Association.

The Project

featuring Hugo Clarence Janody

Hugo Clarence Janody developed a program there centered on the theme of archives, working with the individuals and families served by the facility, as well as the women and men who work there.

The participants first chose an old postcard from the Fleury Delomez collection – Military history: postcards from Thessaloniki, the Eastern Front, Italy, the Dordogne, Haisne, La Bassée, Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, and the Pas-de-Calais Day, from the Pas-de-Calais Departmental Archives.

Each participant was then invited to freely write or inscribe a memory on it in the language of their choice, related to the image they had chosen.

From the archive of the past to that of the future, some volunteers were invited to take a photograph of their own. The opportunity to be portrayed with dignity at such an uncertain moment in life was met with enthusiasm. Each person was able to turn it into a postcard commemorating their visit to Nédonchel and take it with them on their journey ahead.

The resulting body of work is a polyphony composed of fragments of the lives of men, women, and children at a dead end. It arose from a sense of incomprehension and is fueled by a “ uncertain certainty ", as Emily Dickinson describes it in her poem On the Existence of Paradise .

This project, carried out in collaboration with the Pas-de-Calais Department, was the subject of a publication and an exhibition at the Institute in 2023.