They immolated themselves to make themselves heard

Between 2011 and 2013 in France, every two weeks, someone set themselves on fire in a public square, in their company's parking lot, in the schoolyard, in front of the tax office, etc.

Samuel Bollendorff photographed 11 of these places, in France and abroad, such as a corner of the sidewalk or a peri-urban area. "How can we report? There is no need to show the violence of a self-immolation to be sensitive to such an event, to receive its shockwaves. On the contrary. The calm and emptiness of the places feed everyone's imagination. The orchestration of denial represents the horror," says Samuel Bollendorff in his afterword.

The book also reproduces the words of these men and women or their loved ones, edifying and terrifying, collected by Samuel Bollendorff. Self-immolation is not a cry like the others. This is indeed an extreme act of political protest. In France, it tells the story of the near disappearance of collective struggle, the end of solidarity and the disintegration of public service. We knew about the self-immolations in Vietnam, Prague, Tibet, India and more recently Tunisia for their revolutionary impact. When these acts take place abroad, it is the protest that calls out, whereas in France a discourse on the psychological fragility of the individuals who commit these acts obscures their message.

The interactive documentary Le Grand Incendie, directed by Olivia Colo and Samuel Bollendorff, received the Visa d’or for web documentaries in 2014.