Sometimes it does not take much so as to shake a mountain of hope, destroy strong dreams, and annihilate the little remaining faith which we had after having seriously been hit by extreme poverty. Sometimes it doesn't take much to make us question our own humanity.
In an already deeply inegalitarian France where words such as freedom, equality and fraternity, beyond their sound beauty, are no more than the remnant of a deconstructed humanity, the Covid-19 has come to shed light on hypocrisy and lack of faith of those who can help but do not always do how it must be done, when it is needed and for whom it is needed.
Yes, here, they live - in the streets- almost everywhere -visible or invisible, but they are not hidden. They live here because they have no home where lo live. So, they live where they can, as in a parallel world, an "other world" with other codes: the world of "homeless". Surprised by the Covid-19 and the confinement measures taken by the French authorities, the unconfined homeless have seen their lives turned upside down, finding themselves, since the outbreak of the pandemic, in a situation that is most uncomfortable than they could not predict.
The authorities ordained everybody to stay confined in his home. But how those who do not have home can do so? How to do so when you live on the street?
The streets are empty-no more passers-by. Begging for money is impossible. They think that they are those who have been forgotten in this period of health crisis. Abandoned in the deserted streets of the city, they live in some unsuspected spaces made for temporary shelters; meanwhile ... By then, they live there. They fight against bad weather and the police who seek to dislodge them.
But where can they go in this period of curfew where the emptiness of the streets makes their silent presence more visible and more meaningful? These people, the miserable of modernity, suffer from collateral pains of a scientific-socio-economic and cultural war which nothing predicts the end.
I, the photographer, saw them, approached them, listened to them and heard them. And I thought that their stories were worth sharing...
