Always and Forever There

In the wake of the suburban riots that rocked the nation in late 2005, Simon Wheatley found myself in the small town of Blois in the Loire Valley. A mere kilometre up the hill from the bourgeois town centre, with its buoyant tourist industry, sat France’s fourth biggest social housing project where almost half of the population were lumped in a world far removed from the pretty postcard scenes and the famous château. Shot over the course of a year on a combination of traditional 35mm and panoramic cameras, this work is a reflection of France’s institutionalised marginalisation of immigrant youth. With bilingual texts