ABOUT

I almost never give back stories for the images I shoot. Underpinning the philosophy of my photography is the portrayal emotion….I’m not a documenter of “circumstance” in the traditional sense. It’s true; my images possess a social dimension and have their roots in traditional reportage but that’s where it ends and a new process begins. My images are intended to resonate with the viewer on a spiritual and human level and I try to pack in the metaphysical…attributes which tell their own story. I try to provoke an imaginative and intelligent response from the viewer with a purely visual reference.

This project tries to reach the authenticity of people who had contracted the bitterness or resentfulness through their lives. The idea comes from street photography. It's often about dramatic situations or view points. Drama is created in pictures in lots of ways but using strong depth of field. To me, the most important characteristic was having a sharp eye and being aware of the environment around me. This means looking out for, not just colors, shapes, lights, shadows and so on, but observing my subjects and how they appear and act as well.
the knowledge of my subject matter did help in preparing for that moment. I devoted myself to shooting entirely in black and white. I decided to go with monochrome for the experiment because black and white photography has always resonated with me, personally, in a deeper, more emotional way than color.

These 15 photographs was taken over the last 3 weeks in my home city calls Setif, it’s the second biggest city in Algeria, millions of people lives there and it contains a lot and a lot of streets, my subject was easy to find but difficult to photograph, they’re based in some sort of locked poor neighborhoods which could be quite dangerous and risky to get involve into them, most of these people didn’t grow up with the utmost privilege and they all have been affected to depression, addiction, anger and resentment.

The portrayal against a dark background allowed their faces to fill the whole picture, I worked so effectively that the only real focus had nothing really going on except their close-up portraits which where blends into the darkness. Counting on expressions grabbed out the emotions in a powerful cohesive way.

Despite the fact that they all have this sort of gloominess and this extremely unfortunate life, I found them so uplifting and inspiring.

There was no self-pity whatsoever, there was this sort of joy and the pleasure of being alive despite the fact that they were in this seemingly terrible situations, matter fact somebody who has that kind of resilience to be able to still have a smile back on your face is what attracted me in some sort of emotional way to document their lives.