Jacques Perez
di Roberta Marin [*]
Tunisia is often described as a land of contrasts and this is expertly shown in the images of the most famous local photographers. Regardless if they live in the country or they have left to find better shores somewhere else, in their work often Tunisia with its landscape contrasts and socio-political inequality is at the centre of their production. On some occasions they capture the poetry and the intimate beauty of unexplored corners of their native country, on others they manage to shock to viewer by presenting disturbing images of political upheaval and unexpected human misery.
Among the photographers who have established themselves in contemporary photography, we cannot fail to mention the gigantic figure of Jacques Pérez (1932-2022). He was born in Tunis by a Tunisian father and a German mother and spent most of his life in the capital. His passion for photography began at a very young age, when his brother lent him his camera, although only later in life he moved from being an amateur photographer to a professional one. He studied at the Émile-Loubet technical college of Tunis and for about 16 years between 1952 and 1968 he worked as a teacher. He stopped being an amateur photographer in the mid-70s, when his talent finally emerged thanks to Mohamed Ben Smaïl, the director of the Editions Cérès, who offered him the opportunity of working and publishing a book on the picturesque village of Sidi Bou Saïd.
Jacques Perez
This was an important moment for Pérez as after the publication of the book his life and career changed dramatically and pushed his name into the limelight, making him a photographer known nationally but also internationally. Despite the great success of his photography, Pérez never left Tunisia. In his photography, he showed the love and respect for the Tunisian people and the attentive eye to the radical changes of his country. In some of the most remarkable images, Pérez enhanced the looks and facial expressions of local women and children as well as the passion and sometimes violence during the march of the independence of the Bourguiba years, the revolution that ended Ben Ali’s regime. He was a true artist of photography, capable of capturing the feelings expressed by people as well as those of society as a whole. In his images, viewers can often see Tunisians at work, fishermen and shop keepers, for instance, but also Muslims engaged in prayer and women tenderly holding children in their arms. Along with Robert Doisneau, Édouard Boubat, Janine Niépce and Sabine Weiss, Pérez was considered a representative of the important artistic movement known as Humanist Photography (La Tunisie de Jacques Pérez, 2018). He expressed an interest for the Roman and Arab architectural traditions of his country, considering it not only as a beautiful set for his images, but elevating it to the role of protagonist in all respect. One of the last exhibitions dedicated to his remarkable work was organised in 2021, right before Pérez passed. It was entitled ‘Souvenirs d’Avant l’Oubli’ (Memories before Oblivion) and held in the medina of Tunis. Pérez attended the opening of the exhibition and in an interview, he said: ‘I didn’t study to take photos – no need. It’s above all about seeing. I like to look at 360 degrees and show what I saw. This was not a vocation, it came on its own’ (‘It’s all in the eye: Tunisia’s veteran photographer Jacques Perez’, 2021). Pérez trained the new generation of photographers and was also one of the founders of The Tunisian Cinematheque, which aims to conserve, restore, promote and present films from Tunisian cinematographic heritage in order to make them available to the public. It was inaugurated on March 21, 2018 within the Cité de la Culture in Tunis.
Jellei Gasteli, Remel El- Abiob
Jellel Gasteli was born in Tunis in 1958 and graduated at the Ecole Nationale de la Photographie in Arles. For many years he divided himself between Paris and Tunis, before returning on permanent basis to his homeland. At a young age he travelled extensively in Tunisia, but it was only twenty years after that first voyage of discovery that thanks to Marco Rivetti, an Italian collector, Gasteli fixed his attention again on his homeland. In fact, Rivetti proposed to him to create a body of work, focused entirely on Tunisia. Gasteli accepted and made the same trip again but on this occasion as an expert photographer and a more mature man. The result was the series En Tunisie, which was published in a book of the same title in 1997 and was also revived as a monographic exhibition in 2021 at the Selma Feriani gallery in Sidi Bou Saīd (Brown 2021). Sources of inspiration for the series En Tunisie are the Sahara Desert with the perfect geometry of the sand dunes, the remains of the Roman temples, the decoration of traditional Islamic architecture, the coastline and the Mediterranean Sea, the preciousness and richness of plants and trees in secret gardens. Another best-known series is La Série Blanche (‘The White Series’), which was also the subject of an exhibition at the Institute du Monde Arabe in 2002. The large format silver prints focused on the traditional whitewashed architecture of Djerba. Gasteli used the walls of the buildings as canvases, emphasizing the purity of the lines and the constant play between light and shadow (Jellel Gasteli in selmaferiani.com). He has often invited to take part in shows in which the accent is on his role as an African artist, as for instance the touring exhibition Africa Remix which opened in a few European capitals and in Japan and South Africa between 2004 and 2007. He attended also the 12th edition of the Dakar Contemporary African Art Biennial and published some books on photography, such as Tanger Vues Choisies (1995), Blanches Traverses du Passé (1997) and the already mentioned En Tunisie. His works are part of prestigious public collections, such as the Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, the Institut du Monde Arabe and the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, the Solomon R. Guggenheim in New York, the Sindika Dokolo Collection in Luanda and the Tunisian Ministry of Culture, Tunis (https://www.jellelgasteli.com/bio.html).
Mouna Karray, Murmurer
Mouna Karray was born in Sfax in 1970 and studied photography at the Institut Supérieur d’Animation Culturelle in Tunis. From 1997 to 2002, she lived in Japan, where she also earned a master in photography at the Tokyo Polytechnic University (Goni 2019). She is a photographer and multimedia artist, but has also held photography courses and curated exhibitions. Her works have been exhibited in Europe, the Middle East and west Africa. The main themes in her production are related to the global political situation – with a special focus on Tunisia and the whole MENA region – poverty, gender, mental issues, identity, loss and memory. Karray draws on her personal experience as a woman and artist and puts it into dialogue with specific aspects of contemporary society, which distinguish the modern era and leave a lasting mark on the collective memory. In the ‘Murmurer’ series from 2007-2009 most of the themes that are an integral part of his production are present. In the images there are fragments of walls from an abandoned port area of Sfax, the city where she was born. The walls were the only remaining witnesses of buildings containing phosphate plants, which were banned by the government in 1991 due to high levels of pollution. They were then completely razed to the ground in 2008, but before this happened, the area remained abandoned and degraded for a long time (Hamdi 2011: 31). Only the surviving fragments of the buildings were evidence of what happened in the area. In the images of this neglected industrial complex, Karray found the perfect representation of the ambivalence between strength and fragility, between memory and its loss, between human activities and the sometimes calculated and sometimes ignored risk of causing permanent damage to human beings and the natural environment.
Faten Gaddes, series Palais Belycaux
Fatenn Gaddes is an internationally renowned Tunisian photographer, based in New York. She was born in 1974 and graduated in Interior Design. From a very young age, however, she showed an inclination for photography and while she studied at the University, she also attending training courses on photography (https://www.fatengaddes.com/biography). Her work is part of public and private collections such as the Michelin Guide, the Luciano Benetton foundation in Treviso, the Pierre Bergé in Paris, the Kamal Lazaar Foundation in Tunis and the Tunisian government. In 2009 she participated in the 8th African Biennial of Bamako.
In her work Gaddes is often polemic towards the Tunisian and global political situation and on some occasions, also towards the role of women in contemporary societies and the way they often experience violence, regardless of the latitude in which they live. Another important theme in Gaddes’s photography is that of memory. In 2012 she created the series My Tunis, in which she documented a group of everyday objects in Tunisian society, such as clothes and bags. In doing so she captured in a photograph a specific temporal space in the life of Tunisians and made it part of the collective memory of present and future generations. Another important series which deals once more with memory is Les Palais Beylicaux (‘Beylical Palaces’). In this group of photographs, Gaddes tells the viewers the story of the palaces owned by the Tunisian nobility until the declaration of Independence in 1956. Most of the buildings are not in place anymore, while others have been abandoned and are in very poor conditions. However, they continue to be a testimony to life in Tunisia before independence and to the disparities that characterized society at the time, and which are still evident today.
Fakhri El Ghezal was born in Akouda in 1981 and graduated in Fine Arts from the Higher Institute of Fine Arts of Tunis and in Art and Communication from the Institute of Fine Arts in Nabeul. He is an award-winning photographer, visual artist and filmmaker, whose works have been displayed in many important exhibitions, festivals and biennials in Europe, Africa and the US. In his photographs El Ghezal often deals with people both on an almost physical level, focusing on their faces and their expressions, and on a more intimate and personal level, recording their reactions and portraying them in the most diverse situations. Two series are particularly explanatory for shedding light on the way in which El Ghezal analyzes the human being in all its facets.
Fakhri el Ghezal
The first, entitled Hostages, reflects on how human beings are often trapped in the first place by themselves, the expectations imposed by society and the social media, and then at a broader level, by the world political situation with the countless number of wars and conflicts, globalization and environmental issues. In the images, people agreed to be taken as ‘hostages’ by the lens of the artist for a while, while photographed in a domestic situation (fig.5). They are holding a plate on which ‘Hostage’ is written followed by a number, freely chosen by them. In the making of the series, the models initially were relatives of El Ghezal, only in a second phase also friends and acquaintances became part of the project (Ouederni – Ghezal, ‘Fakhri El Ghezal, on Hostagè 2013). In another series, entitled Sidi(s), the artist engaged in a sort of continuous creative process, which lasted for a few years, and showed a more intimate and personal approach to photography and his chosen subjects, sometimes even involving himself. In Sidi(s), El Ghezal includes still lifes and portraits by Tunisian artists. He shows a genuine interest in representing Tunisia through still life whose essential elements are made up of everyday objects, which take on a leading role in the images as symbols of our historical period. With the same intention of leaving future generations with a testimony of the contemporary cultural environment, he portrayed a group of fellow artists, highlighting their facial and body features and placing them in a familiar environment, such as the studio where they work and the house where they live. It is no coincidence that El Ghezal chose the word ‘Sidi’ as a title of the series. In fact ‘Sidi’ is the typical polite way used by artists to call each other and means ‘Merciful’ and ‘Sir’ (‘Sidi(s), un mode de vie’ 2011).
Looking at Tunisia through the lens of its most famous photographers offers the viewer a privileged point of view to discover not only the country but also its inhabitants. Thanks to their images, customs and traditions, arts and crafts, the socio-political situation and above all the spirit of the Tunisians have transcended the borders of the country and have allowed us to understand more and more the essence and contradictions of a country that is sometimes mistreated, but still fascinating.
Dialoghi Mediterranei, n. 65, gennaio 2024
[*] Abstract
In questo breve articolo si propone un excursus nel mondo della fotografia tunisina, prendendo spunto dalla produzione artistica di una serie di fotografi, che dopo aver mosso i primi passi in Tunisia, sono oggi riconosciuti a livello internazionale. Le loro immagini sono entrate di diritto a far parte di importanti collezioni private e museali e spesso vengono esposte in mostre e biennali sia in Europa che nel continente africano.
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Roberta Marin, ha conseguito la laurea in Lettere Moderne con indirizzo storico-artistico all’Università di Trieste e ha completato il suo corso di studi con un Master in Arte Islamica e Archeologia presso la School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) dell’Università di Londra. Ha viaggiato a lungo nell’area mediterranea e il suo campo di interesse comprende l’arte e l’architettura mamelucca, la storia dei tappeti orientali e l’arte moderna e contemporanea del mondo arabo e dell’Iran. Collabora con la Khalili Collection of Islamic Art e insegna arte e architettura islamica in istituzioni pubbliche e private nel Regno Unito e in Italia.
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