Collages from the bagne: New Caledonia and French Guiana / Collages du bagne: la Guyane et la Nouvelle-Calédonie
This series of 15 digital collages explores overseas sites of the former French penal colonies – known collectively as the bagne – and uses digital photography and collage to offer new ‘ways of seeing’ these rich and varied places. This work comes out of postdoctoral research carried out as part of ‘Postcards from the bagne: tourism in the shadow of France’s overseas penal history’, a research project led by Dr Sophie Fuggle and funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council. We visited former sites of the bagne in Nouvelle Calédonie / New Caledonia (SW Pacific) and Guyane / French Guiana (NE South America). Some sites are well preserved or re-purposed as visitor centres and cultural heritage resources, such as at St Laurent du Maroni (Guyane) and Nouville (Nouvelle Calédonie), the respective ‘hubs’ of the penal colonies. Other sites are presented for touristic consumption through signage, providing some historical background to the remains that can be seen by visitors; while other sites are unmarked and not actively brought to visitors’ attention. Some buildings have been re-purposed and are in active use, while others exist as ruins; and some are parts of private property and not open to visiting. Which places ‘count’ as sites of the penal colony is not a straightforward matter, either. Forced labour was imposed throughout the bagne in both Nouvelle Calédonie and Guyane, and took a variety of forms, including mining, road building, logging, building, agriculture and railway construction, meaning that the labour of bagnards has shaped the infrastructure and appearance of both places in ways that are not always easy to see.
The collages attempt to offer a new and original way of seeing the remains of the bagne, as they appeared in 2018, when I carried out documentary photography at many sites. I have also been interested in moving away from repeating clichéd depictions of dramatic ruins – while some remains are very striking and can be beautiful and moving, I have tried to offer a way of seeing and imagining the bagne that makes room for the mundane as well as the dramatic, infrastructure as well as prison. I collected plants from many sites, as well as remnants of fabrics, pieces of litter and samples of soil – signs of lives lived in the present. I have also gathered archival maps, as well as contemporary digital maps and maps for tourists, collected postcards, and made cyanotypes – a form of cameraless photography.
Some of the collages have been previously shown as part of a webinar hosted by DC Moore Gallery, New York; the series as a whole is shown here for the first time.
Find out more at www.cartespostalesdubagne.com
The collages attempt to offer a new and original way of seeing the remains of the bagne, as they appeared in 2018, when I carried out documentary photography at many sites. I have also been interested in moving away from repeating clichéd depictions of dramatic ruins – while some remains are very striking and can be beautiful and moving, I have tried to offer a way of seeing and imagining the bagne that makes room for the mundane as well as the dramatic, infrastructure as well as prison. I collected plants from many sites, as well as remnants of fabrics, pieces of litter and samples of soil – signs of lives lived in the present. I have also gathered archival maps, as well as contemporary digital maps and maps for tourists, collected postcards, and made cyanotypes – a form of cameraless photography.
Some of the collages have been previously shown as part of a webinar hosted by DC Moore Gallery, New York; the series as a whole is shown here for the first time.
Find out more at www.cartespostalesdubagne.com