Jean GaumyLes incarcérés - L'utopie pénitentiaire

This publication is part of the "Ecrit sur l'image series"

Jean Gaumy has been a photographer with the Magnum agency since 1977. For three years, he photographed everyday life in several ordinary French prisons: Saint-Martin de Ré, Caen, Rouen, and Melun. He worked freely and openly—though not without challenges—with the inmates, photographing them only with their consent. What interested Jean Gaumy above all was taking photos at eye level: thirty-nine photos from this patient three-year project bear witness to this with calm clarity. Photography, it is said, offers an exact reproduction of reality. But can one photograph a prison? Yann Lardeau, an editor at Cahiers du cinéma, drew solely on the reality of these photographs to imagine life in these prisons. But can’t photography lead us away from reality into another world—that of a penitentiary utopia?