Monuments
Alan Gignoux and Chloe Juno
Gignoux Photos
English
Edited by Jenny Christensson.
Text by Jenny Christensson, Alan Gignoux and Chloe Juno.
Hardcover, spiralbound
Edition of 150
106 pages
189 x 250 mm
2019
ISBN 9781999961053
Opencast coal mining has led to the destruction of hundreds of German villages over the last century. Although Germany has promised to phase out coal by 2038, extraction continues and the future of several villages hangs in the balance. Combining Alan Gignoux’s photographs of abandoned houses and Chloe Juno’s images of the personal belongings left behind by departing families, Monuments documents and commemorates communities in North-Rhine Westphalia earmarked for demolition.
The two photographers take different approaches to highlighting the erasure of shared history and collective memory. Gignoux’s images document the destruction of houses, gardens, schools, shops, churches, businesses, roads, the infrastructure of entire communities, while Juno’s photographs show us personal objects that recall individual lives.
Designed by Chloe Juno and Emily Macaulay, the spiral-bound book features Gignoux’s landscape photographs presented as generous spreads with Juno’s objects photographs overlaid as inserts of varying sizes. The book includes archival material, including a found German household goods catalogue and Google images showing the creeping expansion of the surface mines.
Monuments comes with two stickers printed with slogans protesting against the mines and a Christmas card with an image of a Christmas stocking taken by Juno as she was walking around the condemned village of Keyenburg.
(source: https://gignouxphotos.com/product/monuments/)
About the Artists
Alan Gignoux is an award-winning documentary photographer and founder of Gignoux Photos, which produces documentary photography and film projects focussing on socio-political and environmental issues around the world. Gignoux is committed to exposing the effects of displacement on communities around the world. His most exhibited body of work, Homeland Lost, juxtaposes portraits of Palestinian refugees with their former homes in Israel. He has been a regular visitor to the Saharawi refugee camps in Algeria, building relationships and recording camp life since 2005. For his current project, “You can see me, but I don’t exist,” he uses a camera obscura to document asylum seekers living in limbo in European cities. Alongside his work documenting refugee communities, Gignoux has for the past ten years been investigating and recording the impact of fossil fuels extraction and metals mining and refining on local communities.
gignouxphotos.com
(source: https://gignouxphotos.com/about/)
Chloe Juno is a Brighton based Photographer, Visual Artist, Creative Consultant, Photo Editor / Curator and Co – Lead of Documenting Britain, with a passion for documentary and street photography.
chloejuno.com
(source: https://www.dodho.com/someones-rubbish-by-chloe-juno/)
About the Publisher
Gignoux Photos produces documentary photography projects focussing on socio-political and environmental issues around the world.
gignouxphotos.com
(Source: https://gignouxphotos.com/about-gignoux-photos/)
