‘A Corps et à craie’ is not a school report, it is a memoir of the universe I photographed during a three year period. The project is a personal look at a place of learning where people socialise. It is also a way of paying tribute to the work of the Educational professionals who crossed my path between 2007 and 2009, when my daughter Malou was in nursery school.
My pictures document daily scenes and can be seen as poetic, but the motive of my work is political. My aim is to highlight the urgent need to defend free, secular, state Education, as it is currently threatened by a government which keeps cutting the number of civil servants employed in this education sector. Let us not forget that 13 500 jobs were cut in 2009, 16 000 in 2010, 16 000 more in 2011 and 14 000 cuts are planned this year. This coincides with the closure of the Master Training University Institute, which means the death of a specific teacher training, from the school year 2011. In this context, one can only praise the men and women who still make their way to classrooms for an average salary of 1.600 euros per month.
(Bertrand Gaudillère | A corps et à Craie, PRIVATE 56, pages 40-45)