Mohamed Bourouissa

Page 19 of the course materials briefly refers to Mohamed Bourouissa, an French Algerian photographer based in Paris. The course says that if the long held notion - '[documentary] is the result of a recording process, and not a product of the imagination' - is true, then Bourouissa is not a documentary photographer. This made me interested in how Bourouissa makes 'imaginative' documentary photographs, and set out to do some research. What follows is a brief description of some of his works, and a short response of my own.


Shoplifters - This series consists of portraits of thieves caught in the act in a Brooklyn grocery store. These photographs were taken by the shopkeepers at the time of the crime and then displayed in the store as a deterrent. By presenting these photographs to a wider public (they have never previously been seen outside New York), Mohamed Bourouissa is keen to highlight an illegal activity – the theft of food –, which is harshly dealt with by the economic system and the law.

This is interesting in that Bourouissa didn't plan or take the images himself, but thought of a concept and brought the images together in a collection.


The Hood - Bourouissa spent part of the year 2014 in the Northwest district of Philadelphia (USA). Over several months, he photographed the district’s equestrian community: ordinary street scenes and riders. Back in France he concocted an experimental silver print procedure allowing his black and white negatives to be printed onto the surfaces of car body parts. The works encompass two symbols of American culture: cars and horses, and echoes the reflections of urban life reflected in cars parked in the street.

This type of documentary photography certainly warrants imagination and creativity. Bourouissa has clearly trancended a simple recording process, where the printed product is also a part of the vision, rather than just a material to display an image.


Périphériques - This series of images attacks the clichés associated with the suburbs creating stagings that feign spontaneity and caricature the decisive moment of Cartier-Bresson. For some of the pictures, Bourouissa was inspired by paintings: 'in Red Square, for example, I relied on Flagellation of Christ by Piero della Francesca for image composition and arrangement of characters'.

'The series is a placement and organization of the tension in the space that is put forward. It depicts the suburbs as a conceptual object, artistic in situations that ordinarily would be the responsibility of photojournalism. By removing the cliches of this, I discusses the issue of balance of power and the question of the mechanics of power.'

It's difficult reading art-speak translated from French, but from what I can gather the images Périphériques were posed, in the style of the decisive moment. So in essence Bourouissa is documenting real people and places, but with an artistic spin which sees him place the characters, often following compositional concepts from paintings.


Temps Mort - Bourouissa asked a friend – known only as JC – detained in a French prison to share the banality of his confinement via an illegally smuggled cell phones pictures and over 300 SMS messages. JC and Bourouissa worked together over a period of 6 months. Initially Bourouissa had to instruct JC closely describing the shots he was looking for. Bourouissa broke down the boundary between the imprisoned JC and himself as a free man by filming repeated actions outside the walls on his own camera phone – at one point in the film JC’s steps on a jail corridor blur into Bourouissa’s steps through snow in the free world. Low-res imagery is associated with the spontaneous capture of event, with protest, with skirmish, with citizen documentation and more often than not with the testimony of the individual against the (violent) uncertainties of the State in which they exist.

A very interesting project, skirting legal and ethical boundaries. What I enjoyed most about this work was how Bourouissa channeled his vision through a third party - he wasn't able to be present at these scenes himself, but advised JC on the sort of images he wanted to create, and their composition. As I've seen with some other photographers, you don't have to physically press the shutter yourself to be the creative driving-force behind an image. 

References

 

Bahmed-Schwartz, S. (2016). Les allégories périurbaines de Mohamed Bourouissa | VICE | France. [online] VICE. Available at: https://www.vice.com/fr/read/les-allegories-periurbaines-de-mohamed-bourouissa [Accessed 23 Jun. 2016].

Bourouissa, M. (2016). Temps Mort. [video] Available at: https://vimeo.com/63764961 [Accessed 23 Jun. 2016].

Brook, P. (2016). Mohamed Bourouissa | Prison Photography. [online] Prisonphotography.org. Available at: https://prisonphotography.org/tag/mohamed-bourouissa/ [Accessed 23 Jun. 2016].

Fund, A. (2016). Photographic prints from the 'Peripherique' series by Mohamed Bourouissa. [online] Art Fund. Available at: http://www.artfund.org/supporting-museums/art-weve-helped-buy/artwork/11174/photographic-prints-from-the-series [Accessed 23 Jun. 2016].

Lespressesdureel.com. (2016). Mohamed Bourouissa: Temps Mort – Les presses du réel (book). [online] Available at: http://www.lespressesdureel.com/EN/ouvrage.php?id=3155&menu= [Accessed 23 Jun. 2016].

Paris-art.com. (2016). Mohamed Bourouissa | P�riph�rique | Toulouse. Le Ch�teau d’Eau. [online] Available at: http://www.paris-art.com/agenda-culturel-paris/peripherique/bourouissa-mohamed/3611.html [Accessed 23 Jun. 2016].

Seixas, F. (2015). <02.> Artists - Mohamed Bourouissa. [online] Biennaledelyon.com. Available at: http://www.biennaledelyon.com/uk/la-vie-moderne-home-eng/artists/mohamed-bourouissa-eng.html [Accessed 23 Jun. 2016].