‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’
it’s 13 January 2013. I’m deranged.
I have been photographing Roma families since July 2012, mainly in the Bastille district in Paris, where in 1789 the motto of the French Republic, ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’, was pronounced for the first time. In this same neighbourhood lots of small children are going to spend the night again in hidden corners of the city or in view of everybody, in a phone booth or close together with their mother of brothers and sister, on a mattress they found somewhere in the street.
It is a social and political scandal that I have repeatedly denounced. These children who have come from Bulgaria or Romania have been living here in the heart of Paris for several months now, often in temperatures approaching zero degrees. Of course they are not in school and hang around from morning till night and from night till morning in the street. And they are often forced to beg.
The City of Paris and the French government are completely powerless and don’t do anything about it.
The rights of these children are ignored, passers-by look the other way, the state washes its hands in inncocence.
Revolting.
Did you say ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’?
Marc Melki (b.1963), French, lives in Paris.
Weekend portfolio selected by Elodie Mailliet
