1200 buried alive

The basis of the project narrative are news from gutter press issued in the French department of the Nord -Pas- de - Calais, in the years 1926-1937 . Over 500 thousand Polish immigrants lived in northern France at that time. My family was part of this community. Their fate became a spark to begin the research in the local archives. Press clippings that I got from the research, designed my route through the Nord -Pas -de- Calais. The project consists of photographs of the places where the incidents, described by the press, occurred. Some photographs were the results of impuls induced by the retrieved stories. Others were inspired by my route. The project " 1200 buried alive " mixes past with present . It is a story about the locations and people, about the realities nearly 100 years ago and the current reality of the poorest part of France hit severly by the crisis . It is a common history of Poles and French , who’s fate was brought together by a common work . This coexistence continues today. It is estimated that currently 200 thousand descendants of Polish immigrants live in the department. The vast majority of them do not speak the native language any more .