Metropolitics

Another Vision of the Suburbs

Jean-Christophe Bardot & Laurent Devisme & translated by Oliver Waine — 2014-05-07T04:55:00Z

Images of the urban fringes of French cities often tend either to condemn their ugliness or to revel in a strange fascination for these geometric spaces. Here, Laurent Devisme comments upon Jean-Christophe Bardot's photographs, and shows how they give a visible form to the imagined perceptions of these urban spaces.
It is often said that the French suburbs – the banlieues – get a bad press; what is more rarely pointed out is that urban spaces in general are often portrayed in a poor light,

- Essays / periurban, suburbs, image, photography, Le Bar Floréal, banlieue

The world of the blue-collar worker: changed, but not gone

2014-02-19T05:50:00Z

Despite deindustrialisation and increasingly acute economic difficulties in the former strongholds of heavy industry, manual workers remain a key group in French society. The photographs and text presented here describe the ways in which their work has changed, together with the reconfigurations both of manual workers as a group and the regions in which they live and work – and how these transformations have weakened them politically.
Manual workers played a central role in shaping and

- From the Field / inequalities, deindustrialization, work, crisis, photography, Le Bar Floréal, working classes, industry, blue-collar workers, manual workers, workers, mobilization

Migrant Destinies

Sylvaine Bulle & Laetitia Tura & translated by Oliver Waine — 2014-01-15T05:50:00Z

Although borders are often invisible, they govern people's right to move freely, as well as clandestine migration strategies. Here, Sylvaine Bulle comments on photographs by Laetitia Tura and, in doing so, examines the complex interactions – between law, economics and violence – that sharing territories implies.
The United States, Mexico, Latin America, Africa... are they any spaces, territories or citizens capable of resisting the action of governments who organise “the distribution of

- Essays / immigration, state, migration, borders, photography, Le Bar Floréal, migrants

Mongolian (Urban) Homes

Lucile Chombart de Lauwe & Justine Pribetich & translated by Oliver Waine — 2013-04-29T13:05:57Z

The rapid urbanisation that Mongolia has undergone in recent years has changed the way its population lives. These transformations – at the crossroads between traditional culture, Soviet influence and Westernisation – are here portrayed in pictures by Lucile Chombart de Lauwe and in words by Justine Pribetich.
How are we to address these changes and transformations? How are we to understand them? It is by combining two approaches – the first photographic, the second sociological – that we are

- From the Field / housing, urbanization, Mongolia, Ulan Bator, photography, Le Bar Floréal