CIVIC DISOBEDIENCE

Whilst reading about the camp, I make illicit visits to the camp, repeatedly trespassing on military property to roam the camp, trying to IMAGINE life in the camp...
I return, over a period of two years, to reflect upon and to mourn the events which occured there: unspectacular events, compared with the exterminations camps, but events which I feel need to be acknowledged and remembered.
During these repeated acts of private civil disobedience, I become aware of my motivations: to act as WITNESS and to MOURN losses which I also regard as 'my'/'our' losses.
As an artist, it seems that taking a set of photographs of the site—to preserve both a trace of its existence for posterity (and to show it, before this evidence gets obliterated by official plans to turn part of the site into an MEMORIAL)—seems a legitimate starting point.
To avoid falling into the trap of photo-reportage, and to produce images sufficiently stylized and abstract not to be read literally, I impose a set of formal constraints upon the way the pictures are taken.
The choice of a fixed central viewpoint for all the pictures, and the rectangular format, give the title to the first series: 'In Praise of Perspective': Eight Postcards from Rivesaltes.