Valentina Piccinni: Born 1982, Bari, Italy
Jean-Marc Caimi: Born 1966, Paris, France
Profession: Photographers
Lives and works: Rome, Italy
Franchement
Amiens, a small city north of Paris, symbolises the essence of Europe’s broader struggles and aspirations. Our project documenting the city and its municipality aims to reflect Amiens as a microcosm of these continental dynamics.
Historically reliant on industries like textiles, Amiens is grappling with its transition from manufacturing to service-based economies. This shift has led to high unemployment rates, compounded by challenges related to immigration, including competition for jobs, housing shortages, and issues surrounding social cohesion. Such conditions have fostered the rise of populism, particularly among the working class, and intensified social polarisation. These local dynamics mirror national debates on identity, immigration, and economic policy.
The city’s rich cultural heritage, featuring landmarks such as the UNESCO-recognised Notre-Dame Cathedral and the water-channel-based “hortillonnages” crops, embodies the dilemma of balancing heritage preservation with modernisation and urbanisation trends.
Our approach to documenting and encapsulating the dense human, social, and political reality on the ground priorities fostering proximity and participation. By sharing daily life and on-the-ground experiences with locals, and teaming up with associations that support the most vulnerable populations, we gain access to critical social situations.
This work continues our long-standing commitment to documenting rapidly changing societies. By focusing on smaller, human-sized realities, we aim to highlight stories that resonate with the evolving European human and political landscape.
