Botas Picudas de Matehuala, SP Mexico. In Collaboration with Aline Paley.

There is in the work of "Chucky" something pleasantly surreal . This cobbler from Matehuala in northern Mexico , manufactured in 2009 a new kind of boots for one of his young client who was participating in a dance contest. They were disproportionately pointy. They became immediately very popular in town. Videos started circulating on Facebook and came to our attention in 2011. Those images were for us who stayed several times in Mexico, a completely different version from the usual imagery of violence originating from Northern Mexico at that time. We decided to see this with our own eyes. 
"Los Tribales" tells a story that goes beyond the simple trend. These boots created by teenagers whose eyes are so often turned towards the USA on the other side of the border, now find themselves in Dallas and in Paris where they parade on the catwalk of famous fashion designers.

Urban Farmers of Detroit.

The city of Detroit became a laboratory for many alternative projects. Urban farming is one of them.
In 1950 the population of Detroit was estimated at about 2 millions, it is now estimated at only 720’000. The city is broke, public transportations are missing, houses are abandonned, squated or burnt down leaving behind huge scars in the middle of what was once a thriving city. Wild animals like pheasants or racoons are making a comeback attracted by empty lots and a recovering wildlife.

So how can we reshape a city that lost more than half of its habitants?
Urban farmers have found some answers within this broken landscape. They buy the land from the city at a very cheap price, clean what is left from their last inhabitant and create farms within the city, reviving entire neighborhoods. Some of those new famers sell their harvest at the local market, some others offer soup to the homeless and provide educational programs. Giving direct access to vegetables and fruits on a local level, bypassing grocers is to many of those new famers a real statement and a way of envisioning a new city.

Redhead Festival, Breda, The Netherlands. In collaboration with Aline Paley.

It all started with a model casting. Bart Rouwenhorst, the founder of the Redhead Festival, needed red-haired models for his paintings, so he put an ad in the local newspaper. Overwhelmed by the number of answers, he finally decided to turn the casting into a happening.

The first festival took place in 2005; since then, the attendance grew exponentially. Today it attracts people from all around the world: Ireland, Germany, Canada, Morocco and Senegal. In every corner of the small town, festivalgoers exchange ideas and stories in recognition of their own identity and celebrate the particularity of their shared feature in a convivial atmosphere. Still many redheads continue to suffer from bullying and stereotyping precepts. They only constitute 1 to 2 % of the world’s population, 4% of which resides in Europe.

But in Breda the singularity of their difference is celebrated and becomes, the time of a weekend, the ordinary. This transformation raises the question of what constitutes the norm. In portraying these festivalgoers, we wanted to confront that norm.