“Absurd, all I did was search the web for the most dangerous city in the USA. I wanted to find that strange energy given off by places where rules and social constraints have been abolished or weakened. A sense of freedom mixed with the excitement of danger. Also I wanted to understand and witness what is real life behind the statistics, and check that it’s still possible to reach out to others, as distant and alien as they might seem.
With its high crime rate and widespread unemployment, Camden, New Jersey, overshadowed by Philadelphia across the Delaware River, is a sinister and suburban no man’s land. It is home to a cast of unsavory and mostly black citizens: drug dealers and addicts, prostitutes, vagrants. They are lost souls wandering through a post-apocalyptic setting, towered over by the ruins of buildings turned into crack dens, with charred walls and needle-strewn floors.
It was here that the French photographer Jean-Christian Bourcart spent two years. Based in New York since 1997, he had already filed reports from ill-reputed areas. Having shot portraits for Le Monde, The New York Times and other major newspapers, Bourcart turned his lens to intimate subjects, secretly filming or photographing Frankfurt brothels (Infertile Madonnas), swinger clubs in New York (Forbidden City, 1999) and New Yorkers stuck in traffic (Traffic, 2005).
By combining documentary and visual arts approaches in his photography, Bourcart stands by the subjectivism of his pictures, and never hesitates to endanger himself in order to tackle a challenging subject. “My work can be transgressive,” he says. “I’m attracted to the forbidden, to difficult shooting conditions, and to the ambiguous representation of reality.” His appetite for risk led him to Sarajevo while covering the war in Yugoslavia, one of the stories he tells in Si la mort te gagnait, his fictional autobiography.
Guénola Pellen
Read the full text of this article on the French version of Le Journal.
Jean-Christian Bourcart – Camden
From January 5th to February 2nd, 2013
The Invisible Dog
51 Bergen Street
[between Smith & Court streets]
Brooklyn, NY, 11 201
USA
Opening Hours : Thursday to Saturday 1pm to 7pm – Sunday 1pm to 5pm
BOOK
Jean-Christian Bourcart, Camden
Images En Manœuvres Editions, 2011
45 €
