In 2005, the Dutch photographer Henk Wildschut embarked on a project about illegal immigrants in Calais. This parallel world, also called the jungle, existed for over ten years in the forests not far from the French harbor. For thousands of refugees and migrants from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, and Nigeria, Calais was the point of departure en route to their dream destination: Great Britain.
Images of makeshift huts take on a universal value, linking up with other forms of precariousness that the artist portrays without wallowing in misery or sensationalism.
“The way basic needs like shelter make themselves known forms the leitmotif of this documentary photography project, during which I made frequent trips to Calais, to southern Spain, Dunkerque, Malta, Patras, and Rome. For me, the image of shelter, anywhere in Europe, has become the symbol of the hardship experienced by refugees,” explains the photographer.
In 2009, the jungle, whose population was then estimated at 1,500, was evacuated by the police. This did not prevent new waves of migrants, even if they were not as numerous as in the previous years. In the summer of 2014, the jungle in Rue des Garennes was completely repopulated. Starting in 2015, Henk Wildschut witnessed the incredibly fast transformation of small encampments into a city complete with restaurants, bakeries, mosques, a church, shops, and even hammams. It was definitively dismantled in late October 2016.
In 2011, Henk Wildschut published Shelter, a book focusing on makeshift habitations built by the refuges in the forests outside Calais. The huts were a symbol of individual power and tenacity. In his book Ville de Calais, Wildschut shows that, together, people are capable of building a city and that this population does not deserve to be marginalized.
Irène Attinger
Irène Attinger is head of the library and bookstore at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris.
Henk Wildschut, Ville de Calais
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