synopsis
From 2019 to 2024, Cédric Calandraud returned to the lands of his childhood and adolescence to photograph the young people who live in the villages of eastern and northern Charente. Through an immersive investigation, he documented this period, at the end of adolescence, when some leave to study in the cities without knowing if they will ever return and when others stay to train in the region hoping to quickly integrate into working life. These young people are called Anthony, Océane, Teddy, and are between 15 and 25 years old. The photographer met them in schools, community centers, at their workplace or during their free time when they find themselves “at each other’s houses”, at the motocross track or on the banks of the river. For him, working with them was an opportunity to rediscover this territory he left at the age of 18, but also its history and origins, to connect them to the present and to his practice. Photograph after photograph, he reconnected with this place that he still calls home.
This book is accompanied by a text retracing these five years of investigation, an interview with sociologists Yaëlle Amsellem-Mainguy and Benoît Coquard and a political perspective of this work against the invisibility of rural youth by Félix Assouly and Salomé Berlioux.
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technical information
publisher : Editions Loco
2025
150 pages
82 photographs
dimensions : 24.5 x 31 cm
2025
150 pages
82 photographs
dimensions : 24.5 x 31 cm
about Cédric Calandraud
Born in 1991 in Angoulême (Charente), Cédric Calandraud is an author and photographer with a double master's degree in sociology (EHESS) and documentary filmmaking (Paris Diderot University).
For the past seven years, he has been revisiting his working-class, rural roots through several projects based in his native village of La Rochefoucauld in the Charente region. Using family archives, he first explored his childhood memories in the series "France 98" (2016-2017). He then focused on the native language spoken by his grandmother in the audio project "Nénette parle Patois" (2018, ARTE Radio). Between 2019 and 2024, he conducted a long-term immersive photographic study ("The Rest of the World Doesn't Exist") with young people from the Charente region who grow up and remain in the area he himself left. His photographic research draws on his background as a sociologist. Within each project, he establishes a collaborative approach with the people photographed, from the initial shoot to the final presentation, with the aim of empowering them to be active participants in their own representation. He uses a variety of methods to share the results of his research, working in both institutional settings and marginalized spaces (community centers, local employment agencies, schools, etc.).
Cédric Calandraud received the Jury Prize at the Boutographies festival in Montpellier (2018) and the Exchange Prize at the FotoLeggendo festival in Rome (2018). He was awarded the Laurent Troude Grant by SAIF, Libération, and the Images Singulières festival (2020), the CNAP grant for documentary photography (2021), and the Radioscopie de la France grant from the Ministry of Culture and the BNF (2022). More recently, he was awarded the national photographic commission "Quartiers de demain" (Neighborhoods of Tomorrow). In October 2025, he published his first book with Éditions Loco, entitled "Le reste du monde n’existe pas" (The Rest of the World Doesn't Exist).
He also teaches visual sociology in the Master's program in Survey Sociology at Paris Cité University.
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publisher : Editions Loco
2025
150 pages
82 photographs
dimensions : 24.5 x 31 cm
2025
150 pages
82 photographs
dimensions : 24.5 x 31 cm