Calais. Testimonies from the ‘Jungle’ is an important series of photographs taken between 2006 and 2020 by French photographer Bruno Serralongue. First exhibited at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, in 2019, the photographs are now published in a new paperback book.

Serralongue started taking photographs in Calais in 2006, four years after the Red Cross Centre at Sangatte was closed and refugees moved to the surrounding woods. In this series, the artist documents the evolution of the ‘Jungle’; a camp constructed of tents and makeshift shelters in which thousands of people live to escape conflict in their home countries, hoping to cross the channel to seek refuge in England.
Throughout his career, Serralongue has developed a distinctive body of work that explores the conflict of representation in the media surrounding key events in regions facing geopolitical change such as global economic and social forums, celebrations of new independent nations such as Kosovo and South Sudan in the aftermaths of civil wars, strikes and labour conflicts.
“What I saw [in Calais in 2006] pushed me to go back,” Serralongue says, “and I decided that this photographic series will end when a policy of welcoming refugees and no longer of repression will be put in place by the French government. For the moment, this is not the case.”
Serralongue’s documentary of these events is unique. Instead of seeking spectacular images in the voyeuristic and dramatic style of photojournalists, Serralongue captures angles normally excluded from the mainstream media’s framing of ‘reality’. In this way, he exposes the conflict of representation that surrounds socio-political events.
As a photographer, Serralongue aims to confront images used in the media to frame a certain version of reality that encourage the oppression and injustice towards vulnerable communities. Serralongue’s photographs are taken using a photographic chamber on a tripod meaning he is highly visible and must work within a close proximity. As he watches scenes unfold, he engages his subject in conversation, seeking their permission to photograph them. His practice is then an observation in dialogue with his subjects; here, the refugees at Calais.
Serralongue adjusts the frame to what he sees, at times wide and others more intimate, showing the layers of conflicting forces present at sites of such events. Refugees, journalists, police, volunteers, aid workers and lorry drivers cross paths within the architecture of the ‘Jungle’ – a ‘shanty town’ – confined by barbed wire, government-built barricades and the changing landscape of Calais itself. Here, the experience of refugees is set in context and shown on more mutual ground: a considered observation of a humanitarian crisis.
The book features 345 photographs from the Calais series along with texts by French philosopher Jacques Rancière and art historian Florian Ebner, who offer their fascinating commentary of Serralongue’s images in essays commissioned for this publication. Each text is published in French and English.