Molenbeek is not Marseille

Molenbeek is not Marseille   is the result of two consecutive residencies in Marseille and Molenbeek, which took place between 2021 and 2025.  The residency in Marseille led to the publication of the book Quiet Chaos .

Two authors have contributed to this photographic work. I’ll draw on an excerpt from the writings of one of them, Marc Mawet, to describe this paired project.

"There are no small stories, whether they have a face or not."
There are those that are written as one laces up one's shoes to set out on a journey of wandering or emigration.
Those of a multicultural society seeking to put down roots, caught between the sometimes contradictory demands of its founding tradition and its potential for change—which may lead to emancipation.
Molenbeek isn't Marseille.
Nor by the news stories that have made headlines in recent years.
Nor by the social and functional divisions of a declining industrial and commercial past.
Nor by the successive waves of immigration that make diversity a permanent feature of their urban communities.
From a bird’s-eye view, “grand” narratives oversimplify, generalize, caricature, and stigmatize to an extreme degree.
So, as if to deconstruct them—without being detached from reality or naively ephemeral, by reaching out to what is closest at hand, with no strategy other than to offer possible answers—Anne-Sophie Costenoble sketches out multilingual narratives by accumulating clues. She presents images and suggests associations that herald the text that may—perhaps—emerge (…).”