Zeugma de Mai / May Zeugma A photojournalistic project on the Workers Without Papers (Travailleurs Sans-Papiers) movement who started several strikes and occupation in Paris and its suburb since a April/ May 2008. Qui sont donc ces visages noirs d’Afrique présents dans les manifestations de Mai et qu’on rencontrent aujourd’hui sur certains piquets de grève ? Manoeuvres, agents d’entretien, cuisiniers, ouvriers ils sont des hommes et des femmes qui ont un contrat de travail, des fiches de paie, qui s’acquittent de leurs impôts mais ils ont décidé de sortir de l’ombre. Ils ont en effet lancé un mouvement de grève sans précédent en France… celui des Travailleurs Sans-Papiers. Avouons que l’association des ces deux qualificatifs peut surprendre. D’un côté la notion de travail actuellement érigée en valeur et placée sur un piédestal, de l’autre un vocable entouré de clichés dans l’inconscient collectif assimilant bien souvent sans-papiers, délinquance, fraude et insécurité. C’est à travers différents moments (action, détente, manifestations…) qui se sont déroulés en Mai 2008 que j’ai souhaité me pencher sur la lutte des les Travailleurs Sans-Papiers.Le passage de l’ombre à la lumière d’une partie de la classe ouvrière qui réclame sa régularisation. Il place la question des sans-papiers, longtemps abordée sous l’angle humanitaire sous un éclairage nouveau, celui de la lutte des travailleurs pour leurs droits, un combat qui rejoint finalement les revendications d’une partie grandissante de la société.   [gallery]   North Foreshore   Building an oniric vision of the foreshore of the North Sea and trying to escape from reality. Even if Humans are not present on the images of this work, various elements of the landscape reveal their presence and their impact on Nature.   [gallery]       Urban Utopias   Utopia is the place of nowhere. This photographic project tends to give us some insight about this non-place. In an urban universe from which man is always away, we meet a Nature with various forms and shapes. In its diversity, the Nature seems to take possession of territories characterized by the oppressing uniformity of buildings. The aim of this work is to modify the perception of the city but also to change the representation of the relation between City and Nature. Finally, this work is an affirmation of the subjectivity of the photographer and it invites the spectator to get into the image and to question the link between the photographic representation and the reality. [gallery]       Diptychs... Color Thinking Walls   A series of diptychs as an echo to politics and life, between Paris and Zagreb. [gallery]     The Hallucinated City: A Tribute to Verhaeren   Wondering accross an imaginary city created with a Holga camera and its links with the poetry of Emile Verhaeren. [gallery]       Cities   Scary, strange or funny, graffities from Paris, Zagreb, Split, Montpellier, London, Dubrovnik, give us some political messages or ar least send us back to history but also in future...       Streets and Walls of Stone Town, Zanzibar A walk in the narrow streets of the famous swahili Stone Town with a look at its walls and the graffiti that adorn them with their political and social meaning...       anti-CPE Protests, spring 2006, France When the French youth disagreed with the goverment and its will to introduce changes in the working contract for more flexibility and less insurance for young workers, they went in the streets for demonstrations.       With the porters on Kilimanjaro, Machame, Tanzania On Kilimanjaro, porters are employed by Tour Operators to carry the equipment and the food for the climbers, the guide and for themselves. Even if their working conditions have improved in the recent years, their job remains hard. The trip lasts about a week but those men rarely go to the summit, they are waiting for the clients and the guide  at the last camp, then they go back to the valley...     [gallery]         Plants & Malaria: African Traditional Medicines Malaria is one of the most serious health problems facing the developing world, killing between 1 and 3 million people every year. However, it is estimated that the situation will get worse, not only because of increasing parasite and mosquito resistance to available anti-malarial drugs and insecticides respectively, but also because of deteriorating socio-economical conditions in many malaria endemic areas. It is imperative that a cheap and efficient malarial control strategy is developed favouring initiatives which provide quick, sustainable and available tools to impact on the malaria burden. Among them, traditional plant-based medicine, often inexpensive and available, has many potential advantages. Indeed, plants have been used as traditional remedies against malaria for generation upon generation and some of the most common pharmaceutical drugs are plant-based. Thus, in view of the advantages some plants have for the fight against malaria, it is crucial to fully investigate the importance of traditional medicine, its uses and its potential. The serie of images is available for publication through the agency Look at Sciences as well as other images related to African wildlife, environment, ecology and nature.

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