Recipient of the Immersion program of the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès, American photographer Raymond Meeks spent a long time in France in the year 2022. He photographed in the South, on the border with Spain, and on the northern coast around Calais, two crossing points for asylum seekers on their way to England. He has chosen not to photograph the faces of the displaced, but rather the traces and residue of their itinerancy. There’s a shoe in the dirt, a blanket rolled up on the ground, a jacket hanging on the branches… Meeks is especially attentive to the inhospitable spaces migrants temporarily inhabit: ditches, embankments, motorway roadsides, riverbanks, wastelands and other non-places. Even when not directly visible, rivers are omnipresent in his images. These waterways might even act as a metaphor for migration flows. There are also many obstacles–stony embankments, concrete blocks, brambles or barbed wire–which might only suggest the plight of refugees on a daily basis.

The Bourgeois de Calais , as sculpted by Auguste Rodin, also appear in the series, bearing witness to the catastrophic history of the 100 Years’ War. The project is accompanied by a text from American writer George Weld, who shares with Meeks’ photographs a similar approach marked by discretion and empathy.

The Inhabitants is Raymond Meeks’ first monographic exhibition in France.