Exposition On n'est pas des robots : ouvrières et ouvriers de la logistique.

However, warehouses are obligatory points of passage for controlling, storing, ungrouping, preparing and forwarding goods to their final destination. These activities are carried out by sorting agents, forklift operators, shipping agents, receiving agents, handlers, warehousemen or pickers. These occupations account for 13% of blue-collar jobs in France and 17% in Germany. They are mainly located in logistics zones on the outskirts of large conurbations.
Often decried for their environmental pollution, logistics zones are the work of concrete actors. From the 1970s to the 1990s, logistics facilities were mainly built on pre-existing industrial estates. The land, acquired and rehabilitated by public development companies, is available for all types of business establishment. The role of the municipal authorities is limited to signing building permits. During the 1990s, a real estate market dominated by large international firms (Prologis, Global Logistic Properties, Goodman, Segro) emerged. These companies develop and manage logistics zones of several warehouses, completely private and enclosed, for which they are solely responsible: from the construction of the buildings to the fitting out and the day-to-day management.
It is precisely on these new places of work and on the social worlds that develop from them that the investigation presented in this exhibition focuses.

No, we are not robots!

The work of Cécile Cuny, Nathalie Mohadjer and Hortense Soichet on the workers of the logistical industry is a perfect illustration of the notion of "New Documentary" that Bleu du ciel has been defending for two decades. These three artists have created a close link between photography and the social sciences, basing their aesthetic and sociological approach on the observations and investigations of various researchers in several regions of France and Germany. In some European countries, a new working class is emerging, representing 10% to 20% of workers' jobs, sectorised in boxes such as: handlers, forklift operators, warehouse workers, receptionists, deliverymen... All of them located in the outskirts of the big cities.
These three fighting women, driven by the desire to show the importance of this category of the working population, have made a fascinating and edifying observation, each following her own itinerary and her own artistic inclinations.
This exhibition, whose title "We are not robots" has been taken out of its initial context as an exercise in digital verification, brings us back to the human dimension of these anonymous, often invisible workers, denouncing in passing the precariousness of their jobs. (...)
Gilles Verneret.