Julie Joubert – Patria Nostra

Over three years, French photographer Julie Joubert followed young recruits into the Foreign Legion, a global military institution that offers citizenship, recognition and belonging in exchange for the surrender of name, history and almost everything that came before. Through a closely cropped, tightly focused lens that rarely lets the wider institution into frame, Joubert holds her attention on the individual, mid-transformation: the shaved head, the issued uniform, the muscle built under training, designed to produce a new man from an old one.

Images of "Patria Nostra" by Loose Joints. Images courtesy of Julie Joubert.