- Release April 10, 2025
- Photographs: Vincent Jendly
- Texts: Aurélien Delpirou and Vincent Jendly
- Design: Nicolas Polli
- 76 photographs, duotone
- 144 pages on three different papers
- 22,6 x 30,5 cm
- Softcover with silk-screen printed vinyl jacket
- French/english
- 55€ — 250€
- This beautiful publication, produced under the expert eye of Ufuk Sahim and with great care by the Mas Matbaa team, was supported by: Pro Helvetia, the Loterie Romande, Château Coquelle, Canton de Vaud, the city of Lausanne and the Swiss cultural center in Paris
In the excavations of the future, is this what will be left of us? Cow fossils and a millimeter of black dirt?
Take advantage of a preferential price until publication* and receive your book signed by the artist!
Please note that this book is just like the territory it shows: it gets dirty and dirtier with time!
“When I discovered the port of Dunkirk, with my feet in the coal mud, I felt as if I were staring at a dark figure from the past, from the time of the Industrial Revolution. I had before me a landscape covered in black molasses and dust, brutal and filthy, transformed to the extreme, a dark and spectacular incarnation of the Anthropocene, this «man era», one of those visions that suggest an imminent collapse, with an almost apocalyptic allure.”
→ Until March 3, 2025:
The book “one millimeter of Black dirt” signed
The signed book at €50 €55
Limited edition of 30 copies
Order your book signed by Vincent Jendly + a 14 x 18 cm print (cover image) numbered from 1 to 30 and signed, Photo Pigmentary (Fine Art) print on Canson Baryta Prestige €110 €130
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One of 3 head prints available
Order your book signed by Vincent Jendly + a 22 x 28 cm print, numbered from 1 to 5 and signed by the author, Photo Pigmentary (Fine Art) print on Canson Baryta Prestige –
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the book
“The photographic work presented here by Vincent Jendly offers exceptional testimony to an equally remarkable site: the industrial zone of the Grand Port Maritime de Dunkerque in the Nord department. Initiated by the French government in the late 1960s, this area serves as an emblem of national regional planning policies, aimed at modernizing and “rebalancing” France during the economic, urban, and industrial boom of the Trente Glorieuses. This vast complex is dedicated to heavy industry, hosting facilities such as a petrochemical plant, a cement factory, and notably, one of Europe’s largest metallurgical plants.”
“In particular, Dunkirk’s shallow waters and parallel sandbanks necessitated the construction of new basins and locks to accommodate deep-draft ships. On March 3, 1972, Prime Minister Jacques Chaban-Delmas inaugurated the Charles de Gaulle lock, designed to accommodate ships up to 100,000 tons. Three years later, the completion of the Port-Ouest enabled it to receive tankers up to 300,000 tons. The Braek dike, a seven-kilometer-long strip of asphalt, now separates the North Sea from the mineral basins, where ships can directly unload their cargo at the foot of various industrial units, including the Usinor steelworks. This setup represents a frontier between the natural order and the extreme artificial transformation of the land.”
“The local landscape continues to be dominated by the massive (7 square kilometers) Arcelor Mittal steelworks (the successor to Usinor), which alone generates a third of Dunkirk’s industrial activity. This giant plant is the primary, though not the only, subject of the photos assembled here. Their evocative power resides first of all in their breaking away from the often embellished and stylized representations of industrial aesthetics.”
“Jendly immerses us in the heart of the production facilities with a deliberate embrace of brutalism, expressed through his choice of black and white. His unfiltered approach takes us right up to the machinery —where even men must seek refuge behind glass shelters. For instance, the spectacular photos of the various stages of steel production: importing (an ore carrier approaches in the distance); transformation into liquid pig iron in blast furnaces (almost resembling a volcanic eruption); production of liquid steel in converters — eerie and formidable machines where oxygen is blown to reduce carbon content.”
“As Jendly notes in his positioning text, Dunkirk’s industrial sites epitomize the ‘Anthropocene.’ Since the term was popularized by chemist Paul Crutzen (1995 Nobel Laureate) at the turn of the century, its use has rapidly spread through the scientific community and into broader society. However, in April 2024, the International Union of Geological Sciences decided against recognizing the Anthropocene as a distinct geological period, considering it too limited for classification within geological subdivisions.”
“Nevertheless, it is undeniable that human activities such as industrialization, urbanization, and the exploitation of natural resources have significantly altered the planet’s biological and ecological processes.”
Dunkirk, laboratory of the Anthropocene
By Aurélien Delpirou, lecturer in geography at the Paris School of Urban Planning, extracts.
Vincent Jendly was born in Switzerland in 1969 and lives in Lausanne. Photographer since 2009, he realized a first series on the city of New York from 2009 to 2012. This work has been the subject of several monographic exhibitions in Switzerland and Europe. The series resulted in a monographic work published in 2013 (“New York”, Arnaud Bizalion Éditeur), launched at the Musée de l’Élysée in Lausanne. His second series, Sharks, documents the rehabilitation of an emblematic public service building in Lausanne; it was presented at the Musée de l’Élysée during the 2013 edition of the Nuit des Images
“Lux in tenebris” has been produced between 2015 and 2020. The series offers an intimate immersion into the world of the sea. It has been presented for the first time during the international biennial Images Vevey in September 2020 (solo exhibition). In August 2021, the series has been presented to the Images Gibellina biennial in Sicily (solo exhibition) and in September at the Musée de la Photographie in Charleroi, Belgium (solo projection). The series resulted in a monographic work published in 2022 (“Lux in Tenebris”, Éditions Images Vevey), launched at the Images Vevey biennial in 2022. UIn 2023, this book won the Prix de l’Académie de Marine de Paris and the Prix HIP du livre de photographie francophone
“One millimeter of black dirt, and a veil of dead cows” is the last project of the photographer. A logical sequel to Vincent Jendly’s previous series on the world of the sea and ports, this one approaches the notion of the Anthropocene. It was produced in 2021 and 2022 in the french port of Dunkirk. The series result in a monographic work published in 2025 by André Frère Editions.