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Publié le 16 mai 2017

Laureates of the 3th edition of the SOPHOT.com Contest

Exhibition from May 22 to july 19, 2013  –  Galerie FAIT & CAUSE  –  Paris

LIFE ON A SHORT-TERM CONTRACT
Olivier Jobard

LIFE ON SHORT-TERM CONTRACT
Jun – september 2012

In France, there are people who work at the same job for years without ever having a full-time contract. There are those who have no choice but to cumulate several jobs just to earn the minimum wage.

In France, temps find themselves jobless at the end of their day’s work, with no prior notice, just because their contact has been cancelled.

In France, workers might not have their papers but they still pay tax.

We meet them every day, we live next door to them, but don’t really know anything of the conditions in which they live.

Not many are union members and there is no-one to defend them. You don’t hear about them in the papers because they are more worried about survival than fighting for their rights.

However they all suffer from insecurity whether it be in employment, education or lodgment; they are burdened with debt, and have difficult imagining a future.

This is a report on the France of hire-and-fire workers, as seen through five portraits.

Project made possible thanks to funding from the Photoreporter Festival of Saint Brieuc.

THE COPPER EATERS
Gwenn Dubourthoumieu

THE COPPER EATERS
Democratic Republic of Congo – 2009 – 2012

The “copper belt” in Katanga, in the extreme southeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo, holds 10% of the world’s reserves of copper and 34% of cobalt. At the beginning of 2011, the market price for copper hit a new high : 10.000 dollars per ton on the London Metal Exchange. The trend has continued since then, with the current price at above 8.000 dollars per ton. Huge fortunes have been made on the back of this unprecedented boom, helped by the liberalisation organised by the World Bank at the start of the ‘00s and a particularly opaque management of funds coming from the mining sector. Up to now, only a few multinationals and a handful of individuals linked to the government had the means to take advantage of the situation. Ironically. the conditions are actually worse for the 200 000 Katangese « diggers » who survive thanks to this industry and who make up the majority of the labour force. Investors from Western, Indian or Chinese multinationals have chased them off the most lucrative sites. Forced to sell their production at a low price to Government partners, or driven into recycling industrial waste, their life expectancy drops as quickly as their revenue.


FINALISTES 2013


Sandra CALLIGARO

« Afghan dream »
Les nouveaux urbains à Kaboul. Afghanistan

Julien COQUENTIN
« Green wall »
Deux murs se faisant face : la forêt du Sarawak et les plantations industrielles.
Bornéo – Malaisie

Pierre FAURE
« Roms : un camp aux portes de Paris »
Immigration et précarité. France

Joël FÉLIX
« Vietnam et agent orange, aujourd’hui encore »
Effets dévastateurs à long terme de la dioxine. Vietnam

Brigitte GRIGNET
« The damned and the beautiful »
La Patagonie sans barrages. Aysén – Chili

Fabrice LEROUX
« Malou »
La fin de vie d’une grand mère à la maison. France