Back to Lorraine
1978/79 et 2008


Photographing Longwy, (Lorraine) 30 years after, may seem like producing an epic novel which retraces a factory for souvenirs if it did not concern the dismantling of a significant part of France’s heavy industry, crossing off the map the symbols and the fortresses such as Usinor / Sacilor, throwing twenty thousand Lorraine workers onto the labour market. The only promise made to them for their future was being Schtroumpfs in an amusement park or permanent caretakers in the inevitable ecomuseum of the steel industry. …
André Lejarre, then independent photographer and Alex Jordan, the German graphic designer of Grapus (along with François Fabrizi also a member of the studio), founders of the bar Floréal.photographie had already done work there, shaping an already strong social commitment and weaving the beginnings of a "concerned" work there which continues today through the sharing with eight other photographers.

“The use of black and white, considered so radical at the time, the use of colour or the panoramic view whose specific format substituted for the Leica or then again the way the exhibition was installed, reflect the contemporary anchoring of these photographers who refute any romanticism of the before / later: that of the aesthetics of the crazy grass and disillusionment. "

Dominique Gaessler in the book "Retour en Lorraine", edited by transphotographic press. ISBN: 978-2913176-614). This collective project, realized in 2008, was shown at the Month of the Photo exhibition in Paris, in Mount-St. Martin and in Uckange in Lorraine. It is also part of the big photographic exhibition " French Landscapes " which the National Library presented from 24th October 2017 to the 4th February 2018. (BNF : paysages francais)

Hereby some of my colour pics