Olivier Jobard

At 20, Olivier Jobard joined the Louis Lumière school then the Sipa Press agency, where he worked for 20 years. Today, he is represented by the Myop agency.

After having covered many conflicts as a photojournalist, he went to Sangatte in 2000. There he met Afghan, Chechen, Iraqi, Bosnian exiles… All had left their country because of wars. Overwhelmed by these touching encounters and these exchanges in this last caravanserai, he decides to study migration issues.

Too often described by statistics and hyperbole, migrants form a disembodied mass in the collective unconscious. From Calais to the Aegean Sea, they are photographed in wild hordes or like cattle. These distanced images help to create a visual bestiary.

From Kingsley, whom he accompanied in 2004 on his clandestine journey from Cameroon, to Luqman through the Iranian mountains or with Mr. and Mrs. Zhang who undergo a failed integration, he strives to individualize migration. His main ally is time: he stays with them to create bond and trust. The question of temporality is omnipresent in his work, because it is in the life of a migrant. Waiting and urgency alternate in unpredictable ways. Trials seem to dilate time.