Illegal Identities

For this project I worked with people living illegally in Switzerland. The only fact of being themselves makes them illegal in the eyes of the law. These people have to be evasive about their situation and most of all never be controlled by the authorities. The tradition of portrait is indeed here to capture the identity and the character of the model. Therefore I decided to create portraits showing the masked identity they have to live with daily. In order to do so I play with blur obtained with long poses lit by ambient light and the movement of the person. To bring forward this blur I lock the silhouette with the flash and the two sides of the face with some details: hair, cheeks and a few other elements. By blurring their eyes, their mouths or their noses, by removing those recognition signs, one also removes part of their humanity.