Nakba (The catastrophe) in pictures

More Reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba_Day

Marc Garanger: Femme Algerienne

Photo © Marc Garanger

Unlike the conflict in Vietnam, few photographic documents exist from the period of the Algerian War (1954 - 1962).  Algeria's War of Independence from France officially lasted almost a decade, but its genesis goes back to the early 40s. It was one the bloodiest struggles against a brutal colonial power with over a million Algerians killed, with thousands interned in concentration camps.

Marc Garanger’s Algerian Women is one of the few photographic essays dedicated to that painful period.

In 1960, Garanger, a 25-year-old draftee who had already been photographing professionally for ten years, landed in Kabylia, in the small village of Ain Terzine, about seventy-five miles south of Algiers. Like many politically engaged young men, he had put off his departure for the army as long as possible, hoping that the war would end without him. He was soon selected as his regiment’s photographer.

The women that Garanger portrayed came from neighboring villages. Either Berber or Muslim, they had never before come into contact with Europeans. When Garanger arrived, there was a detachment of armed men with machine guns across their shoulders, an interpreter, and the commander. The women would be lined up, then each in turn would sit on a stool outdoors, in front of the whitewashed wall of a house. Without their veils, their disheveled hair and their protective tattoos were exposed. Their lined faces reflected the harshness of their life. The stiffness of their pose and the intensity of their gaze evoke early daguerreotypes.

Photo © Marc Garanger

"In 1960, I was doing my military service in Algeria. The French army had decided that the indigenous peoples were to have a French identity card. I was asked to photograph all the people in the surrounding villages. I took photographs of nearly two thousand persons, the majority of whom were women, at a rate of about two hundred a day. The faces of the women moved me greatly. They had no choice. They were required to unveil themselves and let themselves be photographed. They had to sit on a stool, outdoors, before a white wall. I was struck by their pointblank stares, first witness to their mute, violent protest."

-Marc Garanger, Femmes algériennes 1960 (Anglet, France, 2002)

In the Middle East, the veil is like a second skin among traditional people. It may be taken off only within the secrecy of the walls, among women or between husband and wife, but never publicly. Garanger’s portraits symbolize the collision of two civilizations, Islamic and Western, and serve as an apt metaphor for colonization. The women’s defiant look may be thought of as an ‘evil eye’ that they cast to protect themselves and curse their enemies.

Photo © Marc Garanger

Fifty years after Algeria’s independence was proclaimed, Garanger’s contested portraits have not lost their strength. When he went back to Algeria in 2004 to meet those he had photographed, he found that the pictures he had taken were often the only ones that the women ever had of themselves, and they welcomed his return: he had become the keeper of their memory. 

Read more: women-unveiled-marc-garangers

Photo © Marc Garanger

Bedouin weaving heritage

It is known that weaving is one of the oldest craft forms in the Middle East, but  nomadic lifestyles and cultural interactions of the past, disregard political borders and political agreements, making it very difficult to accurately attribute material culture to specific tribes and places of origin. Long before Islam, these migratory cultures from the vast region of the Arabian Gulf had been influencing one another, sharing weaving techniques and common functions, creative ideas and terminologies.

It is known that weaving is one of the oldest craft forms in the Middle East, but nomadic lifestyles and cultural interactions of the past, disregard political borders and political agreements, making it very difficult to accurately attribute material culture to specific tribes and places of origin. Long before Islam, these migratory cultures from the vast region of the Arabian Gulf had been influencing one another, sharing weaving techniques and common functions, creative ideas and terminologies.

Woven geometric and figurative patterns and symbols, as visual narratives, message the traditional tribal lifestyle, the desert environment and the weavers'the creative self-expression. The textiles and weaving practice can be linked to the extension of the weaver’s hand, and the graceful moving pace of the camel. 

Women wove narrow bands of textiles, which were stitched together to form larger textiles for the traditional Bedouin tent or beit al Sha’ar. The master-weavers wove the decorated side wall panels and furnishings within the tent, including camel bags, storage bags, rugs, cushions and tent dividers or curtains. The tent itself was woven in plain weave using coarse goat hair, while the interior textiles were decorated with repeating patterns and symbols for aesthetic appreciation, and were woven from sheep fleece, camel hair and cotton. 

The tent divider or curtain (gata), was the most impressive and magnificence achievement of the weavers. These large patterned textiles protruded out from the traditional Bedouin tent, to segregate the men and the women’s quarters. The tent divider was recognised by the tribe as highly important and was the most decorated textile; loaded with symbolic cultural meaning, including camel and camel trapping symbols within the decorative shajarah section. 

The nomadic Bedouin tribes survived in harsh desert conditions and were extremely resourceful. They depended upon camels for survival. Traditionally Bedouins required camels for food and transportation during times of migration, when large decorative woven camel bags (khurj), and camel trappings (hawdaj) were used to carry their possessions, and were adorned with shajarah patterns, and tassels (danadish) of varying sizes and colours.

Complete reading: http://www.soas.ac.uk/camelconference2011/file84330.pdf

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