During several visits to the Western Sahara, refusing press trips and naive propaganda, Hugues de Wurstemberger shared the everyday lives of Sahrawis for a long period of time.
Since 1991, he has crafted a portrait which expresses his warm regard for these people and the cause that they defend, but which, by focusing on the ordinary and apparently anecdotal moments of their everyday life, also unveils the immemorial beauty of these people and their traditional lifestyle. Men live between the sand and the sky, far from the exoticism of camel train and kohl rimmed gazes.
Their hundreds year old traditions are repeated, generation after generation, to protect a culture under threat. The subtly composed precise compositions toy with disequilibrium and light vibrations to provide a magical dimension to the most trivial situations and extract the fragile and precarious beauty.
This work falls within a new style of documentary which breaks the mould of the traditional rules of the genre to propose a new, slightly off-set vision of reality, but which drastically alters the conventions of our portrayal of reality. His perspective has invented a new ethnological approach through photography.
Hugues de Wurstemberger: Sahraouis
Festival Image Singulières
8 – 26 May, 2013
Boulodrome Agrocanet
Sète
France
