In the wake of the suburban riots that rocked France in late 2005, Simon Wheatley found himself in the small town of Blois in the Loire Valley, on the edge of which stood France’s fourth biggest banlieue where almost half the population were lumped in a world far removed from the bourgeois town centre with its pretty postcard view.
Fascinated by the demographics and this opportunity to portray France’s institutionalised marginalisation, he made several trips over the course of a year in his time as a photographer with Magnum.
Always and Forever There / Toujours et Encore là - with bilingual texts - is an attempt to make sense of that experience and do justice to a rare body of work that was widely published in magazines at the time but never to his satisfaction.
