Raymond Meeks and George Weld: The Inhabitants

Deeply attached to places, the memories that they hold and the people who inhabit them, Raymond Meeks (b. 1963, Columbus, Ohio, US), immersed himself in France and set out to meet the people who make their way through the country in search of a better life. On the banks of the Bidassoa River, which for several kilometres separates France from Spain, and in the area surrounding Calais, the American photographer captured traces of the migrants whose paths he crossed and the landscapes that they had traversed. Raymond Meeks refers to these places of passage as “lines of desire”. In black-and-white and in colour, the series “The Inhabitants” immerses the public in these spaces that are sometimes anodyne, sometimes monumental, often hostile, between vast horizons and views bisected by wire fences. The work created over the course of Meeks' residency was exhibited in New York and Paris, and accompanied by this artist’s book combining Meeks’ photographs with an extended poem by George Weld.

Institute 193 exhibitor Sasha Tycko says:

"Raymond Meeks spent the summer of 2022 in the regions of Northern France where asylum seekers from war-torn places like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Sudan pass on their way to the UK. The Inhabitants presents a portrait of these people by giving image not to their faces, but their presence in the landscape - especially the woods, rivers, caves, and meadows where they camp outside cities despite frequent police harassment. To me, this seems motivated by an impulse of human solidarity rather then charity, which extends to us, the viewer, for whom the photographs open up a contemplative space."

Embossed hardcover with slipcase
21.5 x 30cm, 172 pages

ISBN 978-1-915743-15-2
September 2023