The right to a memory
By Abdo Shanan
In a café in Algiers, my friend asked me to look around at the photographs on the walls, all of them images of Algiers taken by Europeans during the colonial period. This raises the question: why are we still, 75 years after independence, using images from a colonial era to decorate our cafés? These images often convey a discourse defined as colonial, where photography and visual arts are harnessed to enforce a narrative where the colonizer is always superior, or where the colonized is portrayed in a way that fits an Orientalist idea, for example. Why not use contemporary photographs, or at least images that do not serve a colonial discourse? On the other hand, where could people find more recent photographs? From archives? The work of many Algerian photographers from the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s never reached the majority of people in Algeria. In such conditions, one can understand the absence of the present in photographs decorating that café.
This is a photographer writing about a generational rupture between Algerian photographers. Not because of a lack of communication but because of how reality intrudes in these matters. Without the internet, there are few opportunities for photographers to show their work in the local scene. Galleries and museums do not regard photography as a serious form of art. The best avenue is photojournalism, which means working for local newspapers, where photos are considered as visual elements meant to fulfill the need of an editor to illustrate an article. The photo department — if we can even call it that — does not do a proper job of archiving or at least preserving all the negatives that they receive. It is almost an act of sabotage against the visual history of modern Algeria.
In circumstances like these, the work of photographers becomes tied to their existence: if you do not meet the photographer, you will perhaps never see their work, and when a photographer passes away, their work is gone as well. It becomes shattered as fragments, a few photographs here and there, images that still we admire, which make us wonder how was Algeria at the time when these photographs were taken? Their work has to be archived and preserved, not only so that it remains accessible to the generations of photographers coming ahead: I believe that every citizen in Algeria has the right to know how their country looked at a certain period of time. Maybe we can call it the right to a memory.
They say you can understand the personality of a photographer from their work. I have never met Nasser Medjkane, nor I was familiar with his entire body of work. I became close to his work after his passing last January. In Nasser’s images, I do not feel any physical or emotional distance between him and his subjects; I do not feel the photographer but more of a citizen caring for others’ daily routine or events. I would say that in his images, I find an Algeria that I think many of us Algerians have lost. Even in his work during the civil war, he avoided dehumanizing the people he was photographing, which gives a sense of closeness that is not present in images used by the newspapers in Algeria. His daughter Meriem told me that her father was disappointed with photojournalism in Algeria, that it was why he stopped doing photography or at least working for local newspapers. His work as well as the work of others must be shown in a way that does them justice — and then maybe we can ease the bitterness of their disappointment.
Photography as a means of self-expression is, in my opinion, similar to the drawings found in ruins from previous civilizations. These drawings give us a glance into the history and daily life of people from that era. Photography is bigger than the frame itself. In my opinion, it is also a tool to create a representation of what we think is reality or a representation of certain people or classes. Photographers could make you or destroy you, it could make you exist in a world where representation is at the heart of every major discussion. When I google “Algeria images”, what I find are mostly news pictures, as if breaking news were our daily life and our routine, while some other pictures from the same search are of empty touristic sites taken decades ago, as if we were looking at ruins of an ancient civilization, or advertising photos promoting something that will eventually turn out to be entirely different from what its images. It is not different in a negative or positive way; it is just different in an honest way.
I do not have any solution to offer, but I know, as an Algerian photographer, that we need to assume the responsibility as photographers or curators to bring different perspectives to an audience. Maybe it will allow them to choose a narrative that is theirs, where they can find themselves and define themselves with. Rewriting history is not valid without considering and discussing issues of representation and the narratives of independent Algeria. A million and a half died for this country; let us not forget about the 43 millions living for Algeria. This country needs to live in its present and has to exist again.
Biography
Abdo Shanan is a photographer based in Algiers and a member of the Collective 220. He was born in 1982 in Oran, Algeria to a Sudanese father and an Algerian mother. Abdo studied Telecommunications Engineering at the University of Sirte, Libya until 2006. In 2012, he undertook an internship at Magnum Photos Paris, which gave him the opportunity to reflect on his photographic approach and make his first story for the magazine Rukh. His photographs have been published in a number of printed and online magazines, as well as by newspapers. In 2015, he received a nomination for Magnum Foundation Emergency Fund and in 2016 his series Diary: Exile was selected by the Addis Fotofest. In 2019, Abdo won The CAP Prize for contemporary african photography, and was the same year selected for Joop Swart Masterclass by World Press Photo. In 2020, he co-curated the exhibition Narratives from Algeria at Photoforum Pasquart, Switzerland.
