Lionel Jusseret
Kinderszenen
[ EPF 2017 – SHORT LIST ]
Inspired by Fernand Deligny anti-psychiatric research, the French association J’interviendrais offers kids with deep autism to live collectively in different country houses. Out of the walls, we walk off the path, cross wild torrents or look for abandoned houses to make drawings with color chalks. For them, a break. For us, a journey.
Autistan, a land of great unattainable desert. Among that tribe, communication is always a magical story. It is unique for every child, there is no manual to enter their own world. Immersion is powerful, the work is exhausting. In absence of all morality, life is unforgivable. This particular childhood is true, brute, savage. They swing between presence and absence, pure sweetness and ultra violence. The idea is to find a gateway with every kid, they only open the door if they want to. No one ever forces them to.
This photographic work began strongly with David, “nomadic” child returning from mental institutions. “Incurable, unbearable, unlivable,” experts said about him. He reached eighteen years but always seemed to have only four. A year
later, no more news from David. One of the private Belgian mental hospitals, where hundred of children are exported every year and kind of disappear between their walls, remained quiet. David was gone. He left behind traces of violence
and memories of laughter and tears. And a picture also.
Short Bio
Lionel Jusseret was born in Belgium in 1989. While finishing his documentary studies in INSAS in 2012, a Belgian cinema school, he began to photograph autistic children after two years among them as an educator at the association J’interviendrais. This work has received the Vocatio grant 2017 and the first jury prize at Les Nuits Photographiques de Pierrevert 2017.
KINDERSZENEN was exhibited at Voies Off during Les Rencontres d’Arles 2013, Angkor Photo Festival 2015, Brugge Foto 2016, Gallery 44 POP UP in Knock-Le-Zout 2017, Les Nuits Photographiques de Pierrevert 2017 and soon at Les Nuits Photographique de Essaouira 2017.
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The Emerging Photographer Fund is supported by generous donors to the Magnum Foundation
Powerful stuff.