Marie-Paule Nègre

It is with this in mind that in 1988 I started an in-depth story on what we have come to call the new poor, a marginalized segment of the population that lives on the razor's edge between integration and exclusion. I wanted to report on the situation of those to whom society gives no other hope than surviving in destitution and isolation, and confronting an all-too-harsh worst-case scenario which they can no longer afford to ignore. I wanted to make visible an ordinary poverty which is becoming so commonplace it might make us forget it is unbearably there. Rich countries have no problem hiding their poor, as the poor go into hiding themselves.
Of course, we cannot ignore the homeless and the vagrants when the country is hit by sub-zero temperatures or there is a sordid murder. The media then turn into over-zealous relay stations for politicians or aid workers... until some other current event becomes the focus of their attention, making them forget to carry out an in-depth analysis of cause and effect as they drown in the maelstrom of ephemeral news. But poverty is not a trivial news item; on the contrary, it is a daily reality for so many of our fellow citizens who must live with it in silence and resignation, in most cases. Those that have been left on the scrap-heap of an economic growth fraught with contradictions surrender to guilt or fatalism and hide their precarious living conditions from a society keen to forget that room and board no longer strictly equate with human dignity or social existence, with all the rights that are supposed to come with it. I have been down in the streets to meet these ordinary people, people who have lost their jobs, that are uprooted, whose families have split apart, who are ill. These are people we no longer see, whom we leave in the care of specialists of charity and whom we simply do not want to get close to. Who wants to become friends with a poor person? But just enter their homes and you will discover another world. At first sight, everything looks very ordinary, there is no outright sign of poverty.
But then you notice telling details, such as a missing tooth, a gaze that is a little too empty, a laugh that is a little too close to hysterical. It is easy to understand that poor people never go out, that they stay together in their closed universe, talk a lot, touch each other in a gesture of comfort, invent games and hopes. Frightened by the outside world, they kill time but do not know if there is light at the end of the tunnel. I had to spend a lot of time just killing time with them to finally catch, in a gesture or a look, their feelings, their vulnerability, their deep everyday distress. Only then did they give me their trust, which meant: "Show those on the outside how we live".

That is why it is my hope that my pictures will serve as a testimonial, will serve as a tool to better understand and fight the circumstances I have tried to shed light on.

Marie-Paule Nègre

This report has been made through the assistance of the French Ministry of Culture.and the exhibition has been made possible through the assistance of the C.C.A.S.