Photography in the ‘Jungle’

This guest blog is written by Rob Pinney, one of the photographers who submitted photos for our exhibition, Call Me By My Name: Stories from Calais and Beyond, which is at 28 Redchurch Road, London, until 22 June (details here). Rob’s book, The Jungle, is on sale at the exhibition and from his website (see below) with all profits going to charities working in Calais.

A complex relationship in a complex place

Grocery Store, November 2015. Shops like this provide, among other things, basic food staples and mobile phone credit top-ups, incredibly important for keeping in touch with family both at home and often at different stages of the refugee ‘trail’ through Europe. Many people in the ‘Jungle’ report having been victimised and attacked by both the police and ordinary citizens when outside the camp, and so feel unsafe walking into Calais to use local shops. This particular shop was destroyed in March 2016 as part of the eviction and demolition of the southern half of the camp. © Rob Pinney

As the main point of departure for sea and rail travel to Britain, the coastal town of Calais in northern France has become a ‘hotspot’ for asylum seekers hoping to build a new life in the United Kingdom.

‘The Jungle’ — the term used to refer to the shanty town settlements that have become synonymous with Calais — has no fixed location. But it is most commonly associated with a former landfill site not far from the ferry port that at its peak during the 2015 refugee crisis held a population of some 8,000 people.

The political discourse around the jungle and those temporarily seeking shelter there thrives on generalisations. Labelled a ‘swarm’ and a ‘bunch of migrants’ by British Prime Minister David Cameron, in the eyes of many the people here are not individuals but a collective mass — the object of a confused war of words: ‘refugees’, ‘asylum seekers’, ‘economic migrants’.

The reality is far more complicated. Many have fled war and political persecution. Others, notably from Afghanistan and Iran, left to avoid being made to fight for a cause they did not believe in. Many will show you photographs on their mobile phones of family already living in the United Kingdom, whom they hope to join. And some have spent years, occasionally decades, living and working in the UK, only to find themselves suddenly ejected. For them, the journey is not one of migration but a return home.

‘What is it like?’, often asked, is a simple question that defies an equally straightforward answer. Unlike the epic photographs of Zaatari in Jordan, whose orderly lines of identical shelters extend outwards on a vast scale, the Jungle follows no such logic. The Jungle is a city. Alongside countless tents and shelters, nestled into any and all available space with little regard to order, stand shops, cafes, restaurants, hairdressers. While different nationalities have generally grouped themselves together — as is common in any city — these lines are also frequently transgressed by a shared political precarity that unites its citizens. But above all, the Jungle is a city that is constantly changing. Some of these changes are internal and organic, but others have been the result of more profound changes in the political landscape in which the Jungle is deeply embedded, and yet over which it holds no control.

While cameras are a common sight, they are treated with great suspicion. Many people are wary of being photographed: some fear it may endanger their families should news of their escape reach home; others worry that evidence of their presence in France may be used against them should they eventually claim asylum in Britain; and others still feel ashamed of the situation they now find themselves in and do not want it immortalised in any resulting pictures.

It is not difficult to create photographs that evoke misery and suffering in the Jungle. And while such pictures might fit with what we think documentary photography ought to look like, such images usually take recourse to particular visual tropes and do little to deepen public understanding of a complex place at a time when greater understanding is so sorely needed. At the same time, it would be wrong to beautify what remains an utterly deplorable situation that exists not out of necessity but because of broken politics.

The photographs presented here are drawn from a much larger collection that spans four trips over six months. This selection is tempered by conversations I have had with some of those who live there about photography and the representation of the Jungle in the media. One friend from Darfur lamented the way in which many photographers came simply to ‘make their own business’. While I hope that the time I have spent volunteering on each of these trips is sufficient in his eyes to keep me out of this category, I also hope that the images here are seen as ones that are sensitive and respectful towards the issues so frequently voiced by the Jungle’s people. There are no portraits, nor any identifiable faces. In their place, I have tried to show traces of the many lives that are now collectively on hold. The impression left may be one of a desolate, depopulated landscape. But the reality couldn’t be further from that: beyond the edges of each frame is a vibrant and dynamic city in the making.

Police Lines, March 2016. Eritrean men watch through police lines as their shelters are destroyed. Following the partial eviction that took place in January 2016, the authorities announced a more significant intervention two months later: the southern half of the camp was to be evicted and demolished. They estimated that this area contained 800–1,000 people, but a census conducted by charities working in the camp suggested the figure was as high as 3,500. Many of those who lost their homes chose to leave the ‘Jungle’ and retrace their steps, often heading back to Germany, where asylum policy is thought to be more lenient. But many others moved into the little remaining space in the northern half of the camp, condensing those from different communities ever closer together. © Rob Pinney

Mario’s, November 2015. Mario’s is one of a number of restaurants that used to line the mud road running through the southern half of the camp. Many of the owners were formerly child asylum seekers who had been granted leave to remain in the United Kingdom but who had to leave upon turning 18 years old. Many now have asylum in France and, in some cases, Italy, but continue to run their businesses in the ‘Jungle’. Mario, who owned the 3 Star Hotel, was given his name on account of his impressive moustache. The hotel was among the hundreds of makeshift restaurants, businesses and homes that were destroyed as part of the eviction and demolition of the southern half of the camp in March 2016. Since then, and as the number of newcomers has started to increase once more, many of the remaining restaurants have opened their doors to people hoping to avoid the bitter cold of a night spent in a tent. © Rob Pinney

Burning Shelter, March 2016. As the eviction of the southern half of the ‘Jungle’ gathered pace, fires set by refugees and the use of tear gas by French riot police became commonplace. In the UK, the media have woven the persistence of fires into a narrative of destruction and lawlessness. But you might also see it this way: the decision to put a match to the walls of their shelters is arguably the only way refugees were able to exert at least a degree of agency over the inevitable destruction of their homes. © Rob Pinney

Shipping Container, January 2016. In January 2016, French authorities announced that they were going to clear a 100-metre ‘buffer zone’ between the edge of the camp and the adjacent motorway, which leads to the ferry port. At the time, charities working on the ground estimated that this would mean the displacement of more than 1,000 people. It was suggested that at least some of the displaced could move into these newly built converted shipping containers. Among residents of the ‘Jungle’, the reaction to the new containers – presented generally in the British media as a generous gesture – was decidedly mixed. Although they offered a warm and dry place to sleep for 1,500 people, the fear was that the registration information and biometric data that were gathered as the condition of a place (entry is granted by a handprint scanner) might be used against any refugee reaching Britain and making an eventual asylum claim under the Dublin Regulation. More generally, many also felt that by moving into the new containers they would isolate themselves from family, friends and the broader social environment of the camp. One resident described the containers as being ‘like a prison camp’. © Rob Pinney

Cricket in Afghan Square, January 2016. Although still bitterly cold, this was the first full day of sunshine after several weeks of rain, during what was for many refugees their first experience of a northern European winter. Under these conditions, once clothes become wet, they are almost impossible to dry out again – so many refugees made full use of this momentary shift in the weather to get out and play. The shipping container in the background houses a small fire engine, built and funded by volunteers from the United Kingdom and operated by a small crew of trained refugees. © Rob Pinney

Rob Pinney is a documentary photographer and researcher with a particular interest in war, post-conflict, displacement and migration issues. His project in Calais is ongoing, a portion of which is now available as a book, The Jungle, available at Call Me By My Name. To see the full series, visit his website. His Twitter handle is @robpinney and his Instagram account is @rob.pinney.

Calais in our hearts

As a way of setting the scene to our newest exhibition, Call Me By My Name: Stories from Calais and Beyond, Professor Robert Tombs has written this historical account of the city and its enduring importance on both sides of the Channel. 

Burghers and roast beef

The bit of the continent closest to England has always been hugely important to us islanders – so much so that, for more than 200 years, it was actually part of England.

During the long medieval wars between France and England, it was besieged and captured by Edward III in 1347. When the town surrendered, 12 burghers were threatened with hanging by Edward, but spared by his Queen Philippa – a drama immortalised by the sculptor Auguste Rodin in a sculpture now displayed next to the Palace of Westminster.

The Siege of Calais, 1346–47. Artist unknown.

Edward expelled its native population, and made Calais into an English trading post and military and naval base, with thousands of merchants handling England’s greatest export to the Continent – wool. Dick Whittington was its mayor in 1407. It was represented in parliament, and its profits provided up to a third of England’s tax revenue. Its sizeable hinterland included Sangatte, and it was strongly fortified and defended by a large professional garrison.

In the 1450s, it was commanded by the Earl of Warwick, ‘the Kingmaker’, and this enabled him to play a crucial role in the Wars of the Roses. However, Calais’ trade declined, its defences crumbled, and when it was captured by surprise by the French in 1558, it was important only as a blow to the prestige and popularity of the Queen, Mary Tudor, who famously said that ‘Calais’ was written on her heart.

In later centuries, the story was rather one of tourism. Calais was where the English had their first taste of the Continent. William Hogarth’s satirical 1748 painting, O the Roast Beef of Old England (‘The Gate of Calais’), now on display at Tate Britain, showed the contrast as patriotic Brits like himself saw it: between free and prosperous Britain and poor and down-trodden France.

‘O the Roast Beef of Old England (The Gate of Calais)’ by William Hogarth: Tate Britain.

In the 18th century, Calais’ famous Hôtel de l’Angleterre – with its own theatre and carriage hire – was said to be the finest in Europe. Calais was also a place of refuge for those islanders who had blotted their copy book at home. There were so many British residents in the 19th century that it had its own English-language newspaper.

As early as 1802, a plan had been put forward to build a Channel tunnel, and in the early 1880s work actually began at both Sangatte and Dover, and pushed a couple of miles under the sea. But the War Office feared it might be used to launch a surprise invasion, and put a stop to it. After the First World War, the prime minister, David Lloyd George, told the French that he would build a tunnel so that Britain could send aid to the French if they were again attacked, but once more the War Office vetoed it. In 1940, a British garrison defended Calais bravely until overwhelmed by the invading Germans.

Paul J Bishop’s Channel Tunnel Tube, designed in the 1870s, was designed to sit on top of the seabed rather than boring beneath it.

Always one of the main gateways from England to the Continent, its role as a seaport was of course transformed by the building of the Channel Tunnel, which opened in 1994 after more than a century of false starts.

Calais today has become notorious for another reason: for centuries the route by which the British came to Europe, it has now become a symbol of the desperate efforts of refugees and migrants to leave Europe in the hope of economic opportunity in Britain.

Inside a squat in a former factory, Calais. The factory has since been evacuated. © 2015 Christian Sinibaldi

But this is not the first time that Calais has been an escape route. Many French Protestant Huguenots passed through it in the 1680s, and then a century later came thousands of refugees from the French revolutionary Reign of Terror. Successive waves of asylum seekers, including kings and prime ministers, took the same route. In 1848, British workers attacked by xenophobic revolutionary mobs had to take refuge on Channel ferries.

As long as there are people who, for whatever reason, seek shelter in Britain, Calais will be the primary port of call.

Professor Robert Tombs, lecturer in modern European history at St John’s College, Cambridge, and author of The English and their History, will be appearing in our panel discussion on ‘What is Britishness?’ at our Call Me By My Name exhibition (Londonewcastle Project Space, 28 Redchurch Street, Shoreditch, London E2 7DP) on Tuesday 14 June, 7–9pm.

Our grandparents’ shop, 8 Charles Street, Stepney, London E8, 1913

The central figure is my paternal grandfather, Max Seletsky, came to the UK from Gombin in Poland with my grandmother Sarah in about 1903. All the lace and crochet work in the window was made by her in the back room of their Bethnal Green haberdashery. She had started work in Poland at the age of eight in a sweatshop from which her older brother would carry her home asleep each day on his shoulders.

Sarah (a fine cook) lived into her 80s, Max (a gifted gardener) into his 90s. By the 1920s he had exchanged his haberdashery in Bethnal Green for a fish and chip shop in Nile Street, Hoxton, where my father had to spend two hours a night scraping scales off cod before he could do his homework. After the weekly street market, the kids would have gang fights using severed chicken heads as missiles. Max later returned to his trade as a tailor with his sons Lew (on the right in the picture), John and Robert (their generation of the family having adopted the surname Sedley) and eventually prospered in his clothing factory in Old Street. My father (aged 4 in the picture) became a solicitor and I followed in his legal footsteps. The young man on the left was a cousin named Shlomo.

Kajal Nisha Patel – photographer in flight

Kajal Nisha Patel’s photographs have long been favourites of ours and of visitors to our exhibitions. There’s a richness to their colour and a vibrancy in their composition that people love, whether in the slyly provocative ‘Nagar Kitan’ (which Kajal previously called ‘No, this is England’) or ‘The Patriot’ or her shot of a pair of Union Jack socks on the feet of an unidentified model. They are also a wonderful reflection of their location, Leicester, which is one of the reasons why they were used to such winning effect both by BBC Radio Leicester and by the University of Leicester’s School of Museum Studies, when 100 Images of Migration was being re-curated by the School in 2013–14. We’re immensely grateful to Kajal for allowing us to use so many of her images, but, weirdly, she’s almost as grateful to us: she feels that our use of her photos has allowed her to reach audiences and opened up prospects that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise. Whereas I think the strength of her photographs would break down most doors and that we’re ridiculously privileged to have been able to make such use of them.

Nagar Kitan, Leicester, 2011 (previously known as ‘No, this is England’). Leicester’s annual Sikh Vaisakhi parade normally attracts around 30,000 worshippers from all around the UK. © Kajal Nisha Patel

So it’s a bit of a surprise to find, on meeting her in the University of Leicester Union Diner, that she has fallen slightly out of love with photography. Currently the Leverhulme Artist in Residence at the University of Leicester, a position she holds until December 2016, she is looking to develop as an artist in ways that will take her beyond photography to something that is more inclusive and immersive. She worries about the reductive nature of photography: ‘When I’m taking a photograph of a person, there is always a third person present in the portraiture: the person who will eventually be looking at this photograph in an exhibition or an online display of my work.’ It’s the reason she has such nostalgia for found and vernacular photography, pictures that were always solely intended for the people being photographed and the person taking the photo. Any artistry such pieces had, she says, was completely accidental – and the better for that. Continuing this riff, and despite having brought her huge Canon with her to our meeting, Kajal wonders whether from now on her photographs will mostly be taken on her phone, to get back to this idea of vernacular art. To illustrate the point, she shows me a picture she took in the past few days of her father bending down to sweep up around the skirting board in the kitchen. It’s a spectacularly beautiful image – capturing the light and the humanity of a prosaic gesture in exactly the way that her other images do. Kajal, rather ruefully, agrees with me when I say so. ‘Yes, I can see what a good composition it is,’ she says, ‘but that had nothing to do with the reason I took it. I took it because I was moved to see my father – an Indian man of his generation – so comfortably involved in a domestic task that would traditionally be seen as a woman’s duty. That’s what I wanted to show.’

Dad, 2016 (Kajal’s father in the kitchen of his home in Leicester, taken on Kajal’s phone). © Kajal Nisha Patel

Domestic roles, the working lives of women, how women can become emancipated, physically and spiritually, the relationship between mother and daughter, these are Kajal’s preoccupations as she moves into her residency. We talk about the powerful message of the East African Asian migration to Leicester: how the dearth of job prospects for men arriving in the dying throes of Britain’s prowess as a manufacturing nation led to women performing a textile revolution, at the same time transforming the economic fortunes of the city and doing so, ironically, by overturning the standard domestic roles of men and women in their community.

Mum and Dad, 2016. © Kajal Nisha Patel

Kajal agrees but points out that it’s more complicated than that – that women and mothers continue to be oppressed on any number of levels and that, again ironically, for many Asian women becoming wives and mothers represented a kind of emancipation: their new status gave them a role and an arena in which to perform it that they wouldn’t have had if they’d continued to live with their families. Kajal wants to explore this further and to see how these roles led the Asian women of her mother’s generation to develop further life skills, some of them, by any definition, creative skills.

Former factory, Frog Island, 2010. © Kajal Nisha Patel

There’s a neat circularity in what she is trying to do at the moment, too. She says that the arts are not really valued in the Asian community, where knowledge is the highest source of wealth and work is the most potent currency. So she made work her focus, touring around factories to seek out the stories of workers (mostly women), gleefully documenting the story of the 1972 Mansfield Hosiery strike in nearby Loughborough, in which a predominantly Asian female workforce stood up against discrimination in the workplace. ‘Our very own Grunwick dispute, though with less media coverage,’ says Kajal, ‘But it made me feel so proud to find out about it.’ She’s currently producing five films about the strike, looking at the tensions or the balance between the working and the domestic lives of the participants.

Birds, Frog Island, 2010. © Kajal Nisha Patel

Out of work, art. There’s a ‘Yes, but … ’ there, because Kajal has problems with the art establishment: art galleries continue to be elite institutions, with obvious barriers, especially for Asian artists, and it’s still complicated getting BME art shown elsewhere. It’s why Kajal hopes to be working extensively in schools and the workplace, nurturing a sense of self-reliance that she hopes will be politically emancipating, too. There’s a political fire to everything she talks about – whether it’s the connection between climate change and migration, the link between migration and happiness (the key concern of David Bartram, her mentor for her residency), the subject of identity (as big an issue, Kajal maintains, for white British men as it is for British Asian women), the trade relationship between India and Britain. I get so taken up in the conversation that I fail to notice that we are having lunch in an otherwise deserted restaurant at 3pm, which in turn means that I end up missing my train back – something that Kajal seems to feel worse about than I do. As an artist, she works on a very tight budget, and any unexpected expense causes consternation. Though I too am concerned, I feel that I’ve more than got my money’s worth from the day. I’ve found out a lot more about a city that has been a very good friend to the Migration Museum Project, I’ve done so in the company of a photographer who has been one of our most generous supporters, and the chana massala and mattar paneer that made me late for my train were the tastiest I’d had in a long time. All of that more than makes up for the cost of an extra ticket.

There is a ‘Yes, but … ’ for me, too, but it’s not about the train fare. What I wanted to say to Kajal before I left was, yes, of course go ahead and do this work that so fires you and stokes your interests, and for which I know you’ll produce something really special. But there are a lot of people out there who love your photos for their effortless grace and power – so don’t forget to take the occasional photograph, too.

Kajal’s work can be viewed on her website, www.kajalpatel.com (currently under construction); the project for her work as Leverhulme Artist in Residence can be followed at www.kajalpatel.org, and her Twitter feed is @KajalNP.