Odyssey is a photographic work on exile made in the city of Le Havre. Homer's Odyssey tells the story of a never-ending comeback. The return of Ulysses to Ithaca after twenty long years of absence. This work is an echo of this original travelogue. Aglaé Bory followed several people in exile, asylum seekers or refugees, most often awaiting status. The wait is often long and painful. It isolates them from reality and encloses them in a mental space in suspense. Through this succession of portraits and landscapes, the photographer wanted to create a correspondence between their interiority and the landscapes in which these people evolve in order to make this feeling of exile perceptible. She photographed them in their places of life, in their daily territory although it was precarious and temporary. Their eyes are lost through the windows. They are in the dark. They often rely on the sky, the azure of which seems to ignore them.

The sea is the refuge of their interiority, their hopes and their promises. It is the physical reality of the distance traveled - often they have crossed it to get here - and the distance. All suffer from uprooting and worry about their future. When they have acquired refugee status, it is an obligation to break away from their country of origin; return there is impossible. When this status is refused to them, the return becomes an obligation, they must leave French territory. This return then becomes the symbol of their failure when it does not constitute a danger to their life. The return is thus both dreamed of and feared.

These are stories of impossible or unthinkable returns, endless waits after grueling and dangerous migratory journeys, hopes for better lives, far from wars and persecution. But what will become of Mohammed, Ibrahim, Goar, Abdel- razik, Hiba? The latter are all awaiting their summons to the National Court of Asylum after a refusal by Ofpra to their asylum application. Our country, like the whole of Europe, is going through a serious crisis in the reception of migrants and is retreating behind its borders. The endless wait for these exiles is only the expression of our society's reluctance to truly welcome them.

This work was carried out in 2018 as part of a photographic residency in the city of Du Havre produced by the Le Goût des Autres festival. A photographic film was screened during the festival in 2019, with a musical creation by the group Magnetic Ensemble.