These Algerian women were forced to remove their veils to be photographed in 1960
Their portraits are problematic, but stunning
If looks could kill, then a camera aimed at an unwilling subject is an instrument of torture.
Marc Garanger knew this in Algeria, in 1960 when he was tasked by his commanding French army officer with snapping ID photos of their female prisoners. France was six years into supressing a guerrilla war for independence in the north African colony, and Muslim and Berber villagers were being arrested en masse for suspected ties to the insurgent National Liberation Front. As his regiment’s official photographer, Garanger made thousands of portraits of rural women against their will. Many of them were forced to remove their headscarves and veils for the photo, revealing themselves for the first time to the hostile gaze of strange men.
Their observer, Garanger was also their oppressor.
That they were able to confront his camera with such furious assurance is devastating. But Garanger didn’t so much capture their resistance as he surrendered to it: channeling his subjects’ power as a subversion of photography’s traditional role in colonial representation and record keeping. In fact, the 25-year-old draftee was opposed to his country’s actions in Algeria. But to the women facing his lens, he was the embodiment of an occupation stretching back more than a century.
Two years later Algeria would have its hard-won independence. These women gazed back in anticipation. They had already declared victory.
In fact, 50 years later, Garanger’s portraits would return for a 2013 exhibition at the Musée d’Art Moderne in Algiers—now symbols of the country’s fight for freedom.
