William Keo: Extramuros

Well beyond the urban centres of French cities lie the banlieues – the often-stigmatised suburbs, which in the perception of the general public are mostly defined by social problems. Photographer William Keo turns his eye towards the people living there. His images tentatively depict an everyday life that finds its own unique expression, caught between exclusion and community.

They lie beyond the city walls, Extramuros: suburban housing projects built rapidly after the war, to house low-income families who had been forced out of the city centres. For decades, these projects were chronically underfunded and neglected. Unemployment is high there, as is the percentage of migrants. Many of the people featured in these statistics are third-generation migrants, born and raised in France. Without social networks and with foreign-sounding names, young people from the banlieues often struggle to find a place on vocational training courses, and to enter the workforce. Despite this – or perhaps precisely because of it – their neighbourhoods and communities are often brimming with creativity and resilience.

William Keo photographed these young people. In his pictures, they are neither social case studies nor canvases for societal debates. They are young people settling into their bodies, their friendships and their dreams – at least for a while. The photographer’s own story explains why his images convey a particular intimacy. Keo was born in France, the son of Cambodian refugees, and grew up in the banlieue, the often misunderstood suburbs, which only make it into the media when reporting on unrest, drugs or violence. Keo has known many of the protagonists in his series for years. They are friends, or friends of friends. Even so, it was not easy to photograph them. “People have been so betrayed by media portrayals that they’re fed up with photojournalists and documentary photographers,” he explains. Consequently, his pictures are not taken from the distance of an observer, but from a sense of belonging that never needs explaining. Keo’s background, his knowledge and his familiarity with the subject enable him to think, see and work beyond stereotypes. In his series, the banlieue appears not as a troubled hotspot, but as a living habitat: a place of friendship, boredom, tenderness and full of contradictions. 

The series thrives on perseverance, empathy and keen observation; it contains hardly any spectacular scenes. Rather, it tells of transitions, of belonging and exclusion, of self-assertion and vulnerability, and only now and then of anger. Keo’s visual language is characterised by great openness. His pictures disallow any clear narrative, offer no answers, allow for gaps, and this is what gives them their poetic power. “I wanted to recreate an ambivalent feeling – not something absolute where everything is rosy or everything is violent,” says Keo, describing his approach. It is precisely this ambivalence that constitutes the strength of these images: from the rarely seen perspective of an insider, they portray lives in which community and solidarity are the most distinguishing features. 

William Keo’s series was submitted by Benjamin Petit, who is part of this year’s group of international LOBA nominators.