Fethi Sahraoui, Algerian photographer, has been immortalizing his native country since he was twenty. Through his images of resolute Algerian youth thirsting for freedom, the thirty-year-old shares his own reality. Enlivened by the most banal conversations, he uses his camera as a tool to reach out to others.
While photographers often work like lone wolves, Fethi Sahraoui prefers to be surrounded and works even better “ with family “. From an adolescence spent taking portraits of those close to him, to his joining the “Collective 220”a collective of several photographers created in 2015 in Algeria, its history is a story of meetings and exchanges, always with the camera as an instrument of dialogue.
Because for him, photography is a means of sharing. A way of integrating into the world and approaching others, especially “ when you are more comfortable with images than words! », he exclaims with a laugh. Passing through Paris on the occasion of the Polycopies photo festival in November 2023, we find this single thirty-something in a café in the capital, before he returns home to Algiers.
The photo like “ legitimate excuse » to join the others
The story of Fethi Sahraoui begins in 1993, in a working family in the industrial town of Hassi R’Mel, in the heart of the largest natural gas deposit on the African continent. Tossed between Mascara (in the northwest) where he lived with his grandmother until he was 14 and Hassi R’Mel, the young Algerian slowly developed and cultivated his passion for the visual. “ As a child, I spent a lot of time leafing through the images of proper nouns in the Larousse dictionary at my grandmother’s house and I collected lots of car magazines », he recalls.
If he finds himself so caught up in these insignificant clichés, it is thanks to his boundless curiosity, coupled with a good dose of boredom. The cameras lying around his house gradually become his way of expressing himself. After hours spent fantasizing in front of specialized store windows, at the age of 18, he bought his very first lens. It is then certain: he will make a career in photography. “Getting your very first device is a feeling you only experience once. I was in total ecstasy », he remembers with nostalgia.
In language school, Fethi Sahraoui spends each of her breaks wandering the streets of Mascara, camera in hand. When taking a photo, he especially braves his shyness and approaches other boys his age. “ The photo was also a legitimate excuse to interact with these people, which I would have had a lot of difficulty doing without this pretext. », confides the artist. His first subject is unusual: a group of students who sell and discuss their passion for pigeons near a market.
“ If I immortalized these young people, it’s because I saw myself in them. I tried to tame a pigeon myself and I was terrible! But I wanted to belong to their group and be able to talk with them », recalls Fethi Sahraoui.
Show moments from the daily life of these Algerian youth
Over the years, the artist produced several series of photos, almost all of which took for young male models. Inspired by the most anecdotal conversations, Fethi Sahraoui’s mission is to capture bits of the daily life of thousands of Algerians. In his projects Escaping the Heatwave And Stadiumphilia dating from 2015, brought together in a work entitled Triangle of Views, he immortalizes on one side, boys diving into the currents of an abandoned water tower to escape the stifling heat of summer in Mascara. And on the other, young football fans struggling to get into a stadium and watch a match.
Each of his images, although frozen, overflow with vitality, spontaneity and sensitivity. Far from the stereotypes about these Arab youth thirsting for freedom, Fethi has only one thing at heart: telling their story in images. And thus, offer another narration of these young people in whom he sees himself, in mirror. “ People often ask me if I try to give them dignity with my photos. But they don’t need me for that: they already have so much “, he affirms with humility.
In the field, this full-time photographer slips into the skin of the men he machine-guns. For him, these Algerians represent both colleagues and foreigners, fellow citizens and strangers. “ Each time, there are remarkable encounters, people who haunt me for life. What is very pleasant is to come back years later to a person I have already photographed. We have very simple exchanges, but that’s what nourishes me. » Today, at thirty years old, the young artist assures that photography represents more than a profession, but his whole life, to the point that he is not able to cite other passions without prevent him from returning to his love of images.
A work dedicated to his grandmother
The human masses as the main protagonists of his photos, he always learns a little more to “ dancing in the middle of the crowd “. The emotion he transmits in his black and white series, a technical and aesthetic choice for “ get to the essence of the image », Fethi Sahraoui makes it almost palpable, particularly in his project, undoubtedly the most intimate, “ B As Bouchentouf ». A long-term series full of delicacy in which Fethi Sahraoui follows her cousin, suffering from profound mental disorders.
“ When I was still a teenager, I took a lot of portraits of my family. But while I stopped at one point, I continued to photograph him, and have done so for more than ten years now. It’s a bit like a mission for me to tell the story of his daily life, where he can’t do it himself. I hope to continue capturing his habits for the rest of my life, because it brought me so close to him. »
For the young artist, the only one who understood everything about his practice was his grandmother, who died in 2021. The one who raised him for years was also one of the Algerian’s privileged models. “ What I miss the most is that I found pleasure in showing him my photos, and especially in telling him all the context around the photos. I explained my world to him, and it made me so happy. Somehow, I think that everything I am doing is for her and thanks to her, so all my work is dedicated to her », he adds.
His only wish for the public? May his images provoke reflection, tickle curiosity and lead us to ask questions about what surrounds us. “ In a world where everything moves too quickly, what we photograph sometimes deserves attention, time », he assures, with a determined look. Full of dreams for the future, Fethi Sahraoui is now tackling an ambitious project: interpreting and translating into images one of Albert Camus’ collections of essays, Weddings – Summer. With the aim of depicting his version of Algiers.
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