Dzhangal by Gideon Mendel

Gideon Mendel’s book, Dzhangal, (a Pashto word meaning, ‘This is the forest’) provides an alternative portrait of residents of the Jungle refugee camp in Calais, France, by presenting a series of photographs of discarded items such as toothbrushes, playing cards, worn-out trainers, teargas canisters, and children’s dolls. Mendel travelled to Calais several times in May and October 2016. His task: to teach photography to refugees as part of a collaborative documentary project. But he discovered that many of the camp’s residents were hostile towards the camera, fearing identification could undermine their asylum claims and lead to deportation. Mendel’s response was to turn his attention to lost objects on the ground to evoke the residents’ humanity through what was discarded.

From the social disorder, Mendel derived structure by performing a type of contemporary ethno-archaeology. Some objects evidenced the daily violence many experienced; others reflected the banality and domesticity of life at the camp, including the plight of women and children. Visible ingrained dirt and ashes allow the viewer to sense the refugees’ struggle to live ordinary lives under the most extraordinary circumstances. The book includes over 40 photographs with writing by residents of the Jungle camp.

Dzhangal is published by GOSTBooks.

About Gideon Mendel

Gideon Mendel was born in Johannesburg in 1959 and studied Psychology and African History at the University of Cape Town. He began photographing in the 1980s during the final years of apartheid and it was this work as a ‘struggle photographer’ during this period that first brought his work to global attention. In the early 1990s he moved to London, continuing to respond to global social issues, with a major focus on HIV/AIDS, particularly in Africa but expanding worldwide during the last twenty years.

Since 2007, Mendel has been working on Drowning World, his personal response to climate change. He has worked for numerous international publications including National Geographic, Geo, and The Guardian Weekend Magazine, and with NGOs including The Global Fund, Médecins Sans Frontières, Treatment Action Campaign, Action Aid, the Terrence Higgins Trust, UNICEF, Christian Aid, and Concern Worldwide.

Mendel has won the Eugene Smith Award for Humanistic Photography, six World Press Photo Awards, first prize in the Pictures of the Year competition, a POY Canon Photo Essayist Award, and the Amnesty International Media Award for Photojournalism. In 2015 he was shortlisted for the Prix Pictet Award (Disorder) for Drowning World. In 2016, he was the first recipient of The Pollock-Krasner Foundation’s “Pollock Prize for Creativity” and was awarded the Greenpeace Photo Award (Jury Prize). He is represented internationally by Axis Gallery NY & NJ.

gideonmendel.com