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Reportage

Sébastien Leban

Photographer

Sébastien Leban

Nanjiecun

In Nanjiecun, right in the heart of China, time has stopped. The village still lives at the time of Mao : same salary for everyone and generalized collectivism. Welcome to the dream world of the Chinese Communists.

Calm and silence. Not a sound, if not, from dawn to dusk, the permanent crackling of the speakers, strategically scattered throughout the city and hung in height, a purring supposed to edify the three thousand inhabitants of this small remote village of the Henan Province. They broadcast Mao's best speeches. Welcome to Nanjiecun, paradise of triumphant Maoism. Some live there, others come as one would go to Lourdes, a quasi-religious approach to revive the ashes of the past and see what remains of this communism that was to bring justice, equality, happiness.

Sébastien Leban

Sébastien Leban is an independent French photojournalist born in 1987. He grew up in Lorraine in a mining and steel basin. The proletarian and laborious world that surrounded him will influence the different subjects he addresses. He worked on a first project on his hometown of Florange then interested in Roma people from Romania. Self-taught, he moved to Israel in 2013 to cover a rich and intense area. Back in Paris after two years in the Middle East, he continues to document the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with an approach he wants sensitive and human. The objective: to probe the two companies that have been opposing for nearly 70 years through subjects such as conscientious objectors in the Israeli army, the energy problems in Gaza, the African refugees in Tel Aviv or the settlers living in the West Bank. His work revolves around social and societal themes that are dear to him. The subject presented here is based on the components set out and is part of a new problem, that of climate change and its direct impact on the population. Sébastien Leban is a member of the association of photographers Divergence and regularly works in order for several titles like Le Monde, L'Obs, Le Point, Paris Match, L'Equipe Magazine, Grazia, Le Parisien Week-End, etc.