Gilles Raynaldy, Jean-Jaures, 2015

During three years, Gilles Raynaldy observed the everyday life of students, professors and staff of a school establishment in Montreuil near Paris: “the cité scolaire Jean-Jaurès”. Gilles Raynaldy’s photographs are both distant and very close to their subjects, they capture the multiple facets of a complex reality: individual gestures, movements of groups, attitudes, postures and signs of adolescence. As in a film, the book moves through the seasons of the school year; it opens classroom doors, it shows playgrounds, laboratories, kitchens, the dining hall… places that are sometimes bustling with people and sometimes silent. Shots of the exhibition which was organized by the photographer in the “cité scolaire” mingle with these black and white and colour photographs. This exhibition in situ accompanied the students’ life for a few months, forming one body with the buildings’ walls.