TEXTUEL offers a set of stories organized around images. These texts extend the visual narrative more than they complete it. The objective is to bring to the camera angle an echo and necessary elements of understanding that resonate. Thus, the visitor will be able to wander through the galleries of their choice, follow the proposed guideline or, according to their desire and sensitivity, deviate from it, leaving room for their emotions and interpretations. 

Prison(s) in perspective… 

Without a doubt. But what perspective are we talking about? There is certainly an ambiguity there, food for reflection and decantation. Is it a matter of suggesting that none of us would be safe from such a human tragedy and that only fate and then fate or bad luck will do the rest? Such a perspective must be resolutely discarded; it is not an introductory philosophical proposition or a bit provocative to serve as a prologue. Nevertheless… Prisons in perspective, it is the observation made quite early that the prisons of the Republic (and before them, those of the Kingdom and the Empire) regularly supply literature in works of fiction or pages of memories and testimonies of former prisoners or prison staff, sometimes the words of eminent omniscient authors and fruitful publishers for whom it is not necessary to possess the keys to the subject to deliver analyses, anathemas and sentences. The controversy and the emotion then overwhelm the subject which everyone takes up and from which no one emerges unscathed or better informed. It is true that the right to punish raises questions and that prison, as it serves the interests of society, concerns every citizen. The latter has the right to be informed about the functioning of the prison institution, little known and long shrouded in mystery sometimes it must also be admitted, well maintained. It is thanks, so to speak, to serious and publicized incidents that the prison moves into homes at lunchtime and then one news chases the other away... Photography entered behind these high walls, almost at the same time as the discovery of the process. It has inspired credulous confidence since it reveals what really exists. Capturing reality is the function of the still image. This observation of truth seems undisputed. This is undoubtedly what inspired the public commission awarded to a popular photographer, Henri MANUEL, essentially renowned among the bourgeoisie for his artistic and portrait work, advertising or devoted to fashion. The specialist magazines are raving about it! Between 1928 and 1932, the photographer or members of his studio traveled across France and discovered numerous prisons. Others before him have taken a few photos, but the most accomplished monograph remains the prerogative of Henri MANUEL. However, it was only in the mid-1990s that dusted-off archives finally revealed their secrets to us. Photographs that document prisons have remained for more than 60 years in drawers or administrative cupboards... We discover the living conditions of the prisoners, the workshops assigned to work, the courtroom, the walks. Certainly, it's a bit "posed" but the cumbersome equipment of the time will excuse a lack of spontaneity. Henri MANUEL is rightly the one who brings the prison out of the shadows to offer it a perspective of social visibility. The National School of Prison Administration (ENAP) is now the depositary of this photographic documentation fund and has published a well-illustrated work…"the PRISON MANUAL” (2017) of Fabienne HUARD-HARDY.

Prison GRAFFITI or the Baumettes prison told differently 

The “captive” graffiti bears witness to the passing of time, that of a recluse life damaged by solitude, suffering, exclusion. These drawings and these tags, these writings appearing in the shadows, almost from nowhere, challenge the visitor, an intruder in this marginal universe. In the prison, graffiti becomes one with any sensitive surface. With the heavy doors that have been closed, the hostile walls that oppress, the pale ceiling, sometimes the dilapidated furniture of the cell. Graffiti asserts itself and displays itself, transgressive. Graffiti defies the ban, and is then doubly exposed: as an outlet and to sanctions. He exposes himself despite everything and against everyone. He expresses himself, becomes a voice to break the silence and frustration. Graffiti will be this cry muffled in a gag that is loosened, a scratch, a deep scar left in a tattooed and lacerated concrete wall, a scarification, a cut in the wood or metal which recalls, haunting, the prison condition. Graffiti is a message that is delivered in a unique context, settings, and environment. We don't find them anywhere else, we never feel them with such intensity. It is a common thread that we unfold, with petroglyphs, it is a narrative and often synthetic story that we reveal in successive layers and after many other solitary castaways, on the great palimpsest wall of the confinement. Like a personal logbook, we turn the pages of memories and the analepsis overwhelms and subverts the narrative pattern. Then, the tears of rage, the desires, the regrets spread. We mix arrogance with provocation, newfound ambition with astonishment and abandonment, outrage and obscenity with dreams and poetry. Prison time imposes the rhythms of life in detention and the framework of the story. And in solitude we cling to these tenuous threads of life so as not to fall again. With a start, we reaffirm our origins, our attachment to the family, to the social group, to the city, to the neighborhood. Graffiti then carries a claim of identity. We summon our bearings and we try to resist. This resistance is reflected in graffiti, it is a message that we transmit in this provisional universe on the margins. Resistance despite doubt and uncertainty, resistance to a hostile environment, resistance to institutions. With graffiti, we discover the web of a chaotic life itinerary which is part of the subjectivity of a character who has become an inmate, but a lucid actor in a constrained and confined framework. Graffiti becomes a supportive traveling companion that tells a story. Hers. Sometimes with undoubtedly some arrangements and pretensions. Prison graffiti associates this identity marker with an existential tracer which mixes reality and fiction in a sometimes confessional story. Graffiti clearly reflects an urgency of writing and this individual passage to transgressive action. Its author releases buried emotions, which he transfers to the different media available to him. The words often click without sentences, the images spring forth and soon this projective mechanism takes shape in its raw state on the material to remind the detained person of the state of their condition. To achieve this, we use the means at hand and misfortune. The round-tipped penknife from the canteen and a used fork tine replace the aerosol can and the stencil. The pen in the package replaces the brush and the color palette. Here, no crew or team, no calligraphy, no wildstyle or 3D lettering or stylized tag to mark your territory or impose an underground art and no one canteen Molotow or Montana. This neo-parietal art associated with writing, developed in situ, borrows from street graffiti and underground graffiti its character as an ephemeral, rebellious and subversive art sometimes marked by derision. This borrowing, however, does not authorize any analogy. This graffiti is above all that of circumstances, imposed by the situation and the prison environment and will remain without follow-up after release. It is therefore that of a temporary context and under influence. However, it is particularly complex to decipher for those who do not master the codes and do not have the keys. It is therefore appropriate to examine the notion of “prison graffiti” with caution. Indeed, prison graffiti cannot be reduced to a homogeneous category which would absorb both the form, the content, the expression and its author, in all places.

This often unknown environment (architectural, material, social, human) requires experience and in-depth knowledge of places, rituals and organized life paths, which are decisive for understanding its vernacular character and its revealed meaning, its nuances and grasping its nature: protester, protester, identity. Knowing that it is also to varying degrees, a bit of all that. The prison becomes a sensor of opportunities and the “captive character” ultimately remains the sole master of the game and the places to choose the content and opportunistic forms of his intervention in a singular space that the “I” has decided to invest and take ownership. This expressive gesture becoming a megaphone engages in politics. This disparate, even heterogeneous production suggests multiple readings, cross-analyses and its share of interpretations. Graffiti brings together social anthropology and ethnography, sociology of organizations and political science, history, criminology and penitentiary science, poetics and aesthetics to bring them into dialogue through encounters. But also comparative literature, philosophy, semantics, narrative semiotics, architecture, archival science. Without forgetting photography which shows and oscillates, figurative, documentary and humanist to communicate to us “information of reality” or else conceptual, expressionist and aesthetic to develop an artistic corpus. However, this work of investigation and research will most often be carried out post mortem, in the deep silence of an abandoned site which has become wasteland, deprived of all living memory to bear any testimony, even marked by the subjectivity of the story. Finally, we know well that each prison has its history and its audiences, traditions, its regulations and its customs...sometimes a reputation. This difficult work of deciphering must be undertaken with caution so as not to decontextualize and divert the meaning of the graffiti, recompose the scene and the settings, write a new romanticized page of the prison or attempt an adventurous hypothetico-deductive narration. It is equally important not to place oneself outside of any local context and to avoid the pitfall of taking a political and ideological position under cover. This prison graffiti has been disqualified, ignored and relegated. No doubt in the same way as the structure that welcomed him. It deserves a valorization of which it has been deprived and gives rise to an emergency situation to be addressed. Property maintenance work, renovation projects, demolitions of dilapidated prisons jeopardize the recognition and conservation of all this graffiti as well as the work of memory which concerns places of detention. Without preservation and without archives, it is obviously a little-known page of penal and penitentiary history that we turn over with indifference and a fragment of our judicial and penitentiary heritage from which we turn away through negligence. 

Introductory notice to “Baumettes, graffiti under surveillance” - September 2019 (extracts). Notice increased in 2022. Selection of graffiti from the photographic exhibition Baumettes, the memory of the shadow organized on the occasion of the “Adieu Baumettes” demonstration, the opening of places of detention to the public from September 15 to November 30, 2019 and during the Days European Heritage 2019 in Marseille.

BAUMETTES, the memory of the shadow 

The exhibition gallery presented in situ constitutes a unique visual testimony which moves away from the usual forms and contents which accompany the evocation of news items and magazine reports. This gallery precedes the eponymous work (see in the PUBLICATIONS menu) and takes us into the depths of an obscure and reclusive universe, that of the emblematic prison of Marseille which has always occupied a special place in our collective imagination. In this microcosm deemed invisible, photography asserts its presence at every moment, without concealment and intrudes without imposing itself to reveal a very unusual daily and social life, where everyone subsists with the means at hand, but in interaction with other actors, cell and corridor companions and guards. A slow and monotonous daily life broken by fleeting and ephemeral opportunities, sets the horizon line. The sometimes violent light, the contrasts and densities or the chiaroscuro interpret the atmosphere. We invest in these unusual places which have shaped the legend of the Marseille prison, with endless gray days, which reveal this side of the shadows. Because this icon still haunts our collective imagination behind its high stone walls which only reveal monumental and ornamental deadly sins to intimidate and keep away the passerby. This part of the shadow takes place within. It is that of the living conditions in detention, of the inevitable promiscuity, of the moments of solitude, of everything that accompanies this long time of shared ordeal: visiting rooms, walks, activities, canteens and meals in the cell, authorized expressions and communications. or illegal… It is also the revelation of a unique prison atmosphere in a complex ecosystem, with established uses, codes and rituals, confinement architecture, cells, furniture, disparate and vernacular utensils. Graffiti, representative of a transgressive expression, reveals atmospheric notes and covers pale, tattooed and scarred walls. This part of the shadow is returned to us. And because it solicits the visitor-citizen, invites us to reflect on the meaning of the custodial sentence by investing in the places of confinement in order to shake up our mental images and summon the vast field of our representations of prison.

SEPTEM PECCATA CAPITALIA is at Baumettes…or how to ward off the prosperity of vice 

Gaston CASTEL is not just a builder. He is visionary and keen to give meaning to his achievements. He often calls on sculptors. This prison, even if it is far from the heart of the city, must make an impression. We must strike the imagination of the passerby who ventures to continue his path towards the cove of Morgiou and perhaps give him food for thought. The symbolism must be strong to stigmatize the culprit and his fault and point out to the curious gaze of the onlooker this place of turpitude and torment. The architect will solicit the sculptor and artist Antoine SARTORIO. Monumental and ornamental statues representing the seven deadly sins will surround the exterior wall of the prison in an allegorical manner. The men's quarters of Grandes Baumettes will be equipped with the two sins of Gluttony and Anger to frame the main entrance. The main door of the Petites Baumettes, intended to receive women, will be decorated with the sins of Pride and Lust. Just a coincidence, certainly. However, no statue comes to pay any homage, so to speak, to the infirmary and the sick. Greed, Envy and Sloth will be scattered on the surrounding wall. All these fallen men and women (punishment/prison) and covered with opprobrium are then surrounded while waiting for forgiveness (redemption/reintegration). If we are willing to consider that this artistic and ornamental project could not fail to be approved by the General Council, we will then remain very thoughtful. Septem peccata capitalia! Seven cardinal vices allegorically borrowed from Catholic theology, exposed in mirror image in Marseille in radical and socialist “lands” and during the Popular Front, in the public domain… 

Extracts from the book Prison des Baumettes, the memory of the shadow published by BoD, 2022