Patrick Zachmann

In 1984, I was 29 years old, and I was asked to make work with young kids in Marseille who had dropped out of school, and were suffering domestic or social difficulties. They were almost all teenagers of immigrant origins, and many of them were involved with drugs and gangs. I was supposed to give them small compact cameras, and introduce them to photography, not necessarily so that they may become photographers, but so that they could use photography as a medium to express themselves. I chose to make them focus on their identities, on their neighbourhoods, their families and friends. This fascinating experience lasted six months. While they took pictures, I decided to follow each of them in their daily lives and make a photographic work of my own. Thanks to this cultural assignment, I understood that I could penetrate very closed and sometimes dangerous communities if it was understood that I wasn't a reporter who would just pass through, take pictures and leave, but that I was a 'teacher'. It changed everything! I was not only 'taking' something, but giving something.