IN PICTURES – The South of the United States in the footsteps of James Baldwin, by photographer Edouard Caupeil – Libération

2023-11-25 12:15:42

In 2016, during the last year of Barack Obama’s mandate, Edouard Caupeil, who has collaborated with “Libé” since 2001, repeated the journey that James Baldwin made in 1957 to support civil rights: he crossed the states of Georgia , Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Florida.

Since the Democratic campaign between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in 2008, Edouard Caupeil has documented the stigma of racism in the United States. He explains his attraction to African-American history and racial issues by quoting James Baldwin: “History is the present.” These photographs are part of a corpus which brings together three American reports produced with journalist Nicolas Bourcier. The other two sections concern Mound Bayou, the first entirely African-American town founded in 1887 in the state of Mississippi and Route 61 which was the route to emancipation for blacks in the South, from New Orleans to the Canadian border.

At the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama. (Edouard Caupeil)

At Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University in Tallahassee, Florida. (Edouard Caupeil)

The Edmund Pettus Bridge, in Alabama, symbol of the civil rights marches of 1965. (Edouard Caupeil)

A mass in the Montgomery Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King officiated from 1954 to 1959. (Edouard Caupeil)

Excerpt from Chased from the Light by James Baldwin: “For if it is difficult to free oneself from the stigmata of blackness, it is obviously also difficult to survive the illusions of whiteness.” Edouard Caupeil, who chose this quote as a prologue to his book, comments on it: “The illusion of negritude and the illusion of whiteness are two strong concepts which insist on the fact that the racial difference is based only on an intellectual construction imposed by the dominants. Everyone is a victim of it.”

At the Royal Peacock nightclub in Atlanta, Georgia. (Edouard Caupeil)

At the Royal Peacock in Atlanta, Georgia. (Edouard Caupeil)

In Atlanta, Georgia. (Edouard Caupeil)

In front of the old Civil Rights Museum in Selma, Alabama. (Edouard Caupeil)

At the Freedom Rides Museum, Montgomery, Alabama. (Edouard Caupeil)

The book Illusions which brings together the three American series by Edouard Caupeil is published by Contrejour. It is currently on pre-sale.

Images of current events, everyday life, art or big names in the history of photography… Find in the “In images” section of the Libération website the choices of the newspaper’s photo department, which favors singular, innovative or astonishing. And because this has always been a concern of Libération, also discover our Images pages in the weekend edition.