Phantasm - Patrick Willocq

Patrick Willocq
By Morgan Ondrejka 

Patrick Willocq is a self-taught photographer who is passionate about traveling and becoming knowledgeable of other cultures. After a trip to the Congo in 2012, he fully dedicated himself to photography.  Willocq has a body of work titled “The Art of Survival” which captures Syrian and Burundi child refugees in these re-created scenes from their lives. An organization called Save The Children was looking for an artist to really capture what its like to be a child refuge and Willocq was their choice and it couldn’t have worked better.

“Walaa, 11, left Syria with her pregnant mother because airstrikes had blown up all the hospitals, schools and supermarkets in the area. They had no access to food, water or health services - everything they needed to survive. One day, as she was walking home, Walaa saw her school explode before her eyes, as shells landed on the buildings. She could smell burning and heard the sound of plane engines as they flew low overhead.

This image uses an original drawing created by Walaa to tell the story of the moment her school was bombed. Walaa's drawing has been re-created and enlarged into a 3D tableau, using props made by children in the camp. Walaa says, "the aircraft targeted the school with rockets. I thought my uncles had been killed and I cried." Many Syrian refugee children experience first-hand the devastating impact of airstrikes on homes and schools.”

As artists, we always need to be aware of appropriation and exploitation, as those are two ideas that are easily linked to photographic work. When it comes to Willocq’s way of presenting and representing these children, I don’t see exploitation. I see empowerment of children, kids smiling for the first time in too long because they had something productive and fun to help build and be a part of, something to take their mind off of the cruel world right around the corner. In an interview with Roads & Kingdoms Willocq talks about the process of creating these images and the effect it had on some of the children.

“Willocq: Yes. The shooting process lasts around 45 minutes, let’s say, but it takes hours of working together, of building together, of exchanging, painting, drawing, etc. It’s a whole process. It was very hard to leave at the end, both for them and for us, because we had created something together. Sometimes I say that their life in a refugee camp is in black and white, and suddenly their life became color. And you could see it on their faces. One dad came to see me and said that us working with his child was making a huge difference. He said he was happy, like before back at home. It was very rewarding for everyone.”