Paris is an Arab capital. Jack Lang, president of the Arab World Institute, thinks so as well. It of course goes without saying that the Biennale of Contemporary Arab World Photography is being held there. From September 13th through November 12th, 2017, eight spaces are taken over: the Institute of the Arab World, the European House of Photography, the Cité Internationale des Arts, City Hall in Paris’s 4th arrondissement, Galerie Binome, Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière, Photo12 Galerie, and Galerie Thierry Marlat. The views of both Arab and “foreign” photographers intersect in this territory of multiple identities. This year, there is a special focus on Algeria and Tunisia.
With abandoned mosques discovered on the way to Medina by Moath Alofi, questioning the place of edifices in public Saudi spaces in closed down movie theaters by Stéphane Zaubitzer, and forgotten Egyptian architecture of Xenia Nikolskaya, abandon is a reference point for the photographers surveying the region. The images of abandoned spaces are mind-haunting. They question history. How does this past work with the present? Similarly, Marco Barbos is interested in the void. The void as a space of a possible event, a possible scenario. A scene where anything can happen, (where nothing will happen).
Next to these deserted spaces, views intersect. Human presence, bodies in action which touch or avoid each other. Youth reveals itself. Youth particularly from Algeria or Tunisia. The photographers document their living space, their environment, their daily life. Though there are multiple identities, many overlapping points exist. From one project to another, the same turbulence is present, similar questions. There is not so much an aestheticism or an exoticism, but a desire to show reality as it really is. Youcef Krache, Abdo Shanan, Yanis Kafiz, Ramzy Bensaadi, Ahmed Badreddine, Mehi Boubekeur and Tasneem Aslsultan, to name but a few, make us travel through the region through the eyes and, sometimes, on the backs of the population.
The Arab world is just beginning to appropriate its territory again through photography. Every country has its rhythm. Saudi Arabia is only in its early stages, while Lebanon, and particularly Beirut, has already been captured at every angle. Lebanese visual artist Randa Mirza, however, is offering, through mise en abymes of advertising posters framed in their actual spaces, a new look at the city. Her images open a new field of exploration and reflection, just like this biennale, still in its early stages.
Sabyl Ghoussoub
Sabyl Ghoussoub is a journalist and photographer and, between 2011 and 2015, was the director of the Lebanese film festival in Beirut.
Second Biennale of Contemporary Arab World Photography
September 13 – November 12, 2017
Paris, France
