The Association, long dedicated to mobilizing people through the medium of photography on socio-environmental issues, created in the center of Paris the Fait & Cause gallery and the website www.sophot.com.

Fait & Cause Gallery
(Fight for a Cause)

As the first art gallery devoted to social photography, Fait & Cause is mandated to promote awareness of social problems wherever they exist in the world.  Since its opening in 1997, it has offered more than 35 exhibitions.  It has chosen to promote photography, the medium best suited for denouncing injustice, inequality, and poverty.

Robert Delpire has been entrusted with the programming and presentation of the exhibits.

The website www.sophot.com was created in 2004 and presents the works of photographers concerned with social and environmental issues.  It serves as:

— a channel for increasing awareness about social photography and its power to incite action.
— a link between social photographers from around the world and photo agencies, the press and other media, galleries, publishers, as well as social and cultural organizations, schools, universities and  professional training centers.
— a space in Paris: sophot.com's center provides a meeting place for photographers and in particular reference materials open to professional and amateur photographers as well as social activists, students and educators. The works of 155 photographers of whom 20% are from abroad have been shown. Some 56 socio-environmental themes have been explored and an average of 4,400 visitors per month access the website. The site can be consulted in French, English and Spanish.

Auditorium de la Mairie de Paris - Hôtel de Ville - 5 rue Lobau - 75004 Paris 

For some of us, time has stopped.

They live in their misery the same way as 10 years ago, but nothing has changed in their lives or it’s even worse than it used to be. Being French or foreigners,  having papers or not, the roof overhead or a street to live in.  Social progress has ignored all those women, men and children in their effort to survive while keeping their dignity.

For almost 10 years, Diane has been the witness of their struggles in the streets, in the squats, the retention centers, filthy four stars hotels. She followed them in their battles for equality as registered citizens in township.

I have met Diane in Cachan, in that gymnasium, the place where the families without papers have gathered living together with pride, although crammed into a small space. The cleanliness of the entrance and the dormitory which was so small that we couldn’t set a foot between two mattresses were the things that took us by surprise.

That women and men who worked illegally during the years – an activity of which a lot of people have benefitted - struggled to obtain permission to stay in France, the country that provided refuge for many people in the past. The country whose language they speak, because most of them have learned it in school, in their native country.

She took care of them in the retention centers, the institutions modestly named, to hide the imprisonment of ‘delinquents’ – criminals only because they didn’t have papers. Nowadays, children, and even babies are closed in there.

When asked about the presence of children in those centers by a journalist, the response of the person responsible for the immigration was “They didn’t come here for nothing.”

Diane Grimonet was there, in those rotten hotels where entire families survive crammed together - victims of a system that enriches sleepy merchants.  But, time has stopped for them either.

During a hotel fire, some of the children and their parents died.

A few loud announcements, some indignation over the sad event and nothing has changed. There were also those who had been left without everything: family, home, employment.  Those who live at the margin, whose life is defined by the street, the ghosts that we meet along the sidewalks. “They didn’t come here for nothing.”

So, we have to be there for them, in order to listen to their voices, show their faces, to testify of the injustice to which they have been exposed and to simply try to make a difference.    

Josiane Balasko, comedian