Week #128: Winner: Laurent V

Mr charles
Originally uploaded by Laurent V

This Weeks Winner: Laurent V
Week #128: 04/17

Photo: Mr charles

BEST thing I like: What I like in this photograph, it is that it treats of a subject which involved me personally: repatriates of Indo-China. I am myself half Vietnamese. This photo was taken in old refugee camps, I wanted to symbolize the loneliness of these old repatriates and to show the social isolation in which they live...homesickness. How the French government gave up.

Camera: This photo was taken with Voigtlander Bessa RA3, and an 21mm color skopar lens .

What I like LEAST: i f i have to work again on a technical aspect , i would try to correct the bright sky in the windows zone because it almost burn.

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MR charles, half French half Vietnamese veteran of the Indochina war, i took this picture in The CAFI CAMP (Centre d’Accueil des Français d’Indochine) located south west of France .
Mr charles live in this camps since 1966.

After The shellacking Of Mai 1954, French authority, had the duty to repatriate all the fighters and their family in France Like thousand of French Vietnamese "repatriates" and not refuges, (that mean they have the French citizenship, for being married with a French, or because they served under the French Flag).
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France had to compensate them financially for the matérial losses .
They just received a shelter, and a "promise of compensation" which never came!

They where supposed to stay in camps just a few month, temporary become an eternity. In April 1956 more than 1200 people, including 740 children, arrived in the camp.

The young generation left the camps and were integrated quickly with local population.

But the older stay or come back to the camp , this place was for them synonymous of a "little Vietnam"... to old to start a new life , they prefer to stay there.

©Laurent Vu Thê all rights reserved