Bruno Boudjelal

Bruno
Boudjelal

biography

Portrait Bruno Boudjelal: Crédit Alfons Alt

French-Algerian photographer, member of AgenceVU’, he lives and works between Paris and Africa.

Born in Montreuil in 1961, Bruno Boudjelal practices photography as a way of life that constantly questioned his own identity and confronts us to ours.

In 1993, he left France to follow the footsteps of his paternal origins in Algeria. This discovery was the starting point of 10 years of very personal exploration, which lead him between travel diary and testimony, to go from black and white to colors, and to accept the subjectivity of his point of view. He then extended the borders of his travel and adventure bigger, to other territories – remote or not – and testified of pan Africanism.

Assuming the identity question as singular and fitting in with a collective history, his photographic work as part of engaged testimony, from “narrative in images that attempts to approach a complex reality. But the more complex the reality is, the more interesting is the diffraction of point of view”.

Regularly published in the press, winner of institutional grants et prestigious prizes – including the Nadar prize in 2015 for his book Algérie, clos comme on ferme un livre? (Algeria, closed as a book is closed?) – Bruno Boudjelal has published six monongraphs. His works have been included to public French collections, and are the subject of numerous exhibitions in France and around the world.

In parallel with his internationally known works, Bruno Boudjelal is engaged in a broader approach and refection on photography through socio-artistic interventions in neighborhoods, the supervision of professional internships, and the curating of exhibitions. In 2017 he presented “Ikbal/Arrivées : Pour une nouvelle photographie algérienne” at MAMA (Alger), at IMA : la Cité internationale des arts (Paris) then at Friche belle de Mai (Marseille), as part of the second biennale of world contemporary Arab photographer.

Series

Satka, 2023

Série | Un voyage dans la Russie d'aujourd’hui : Durant l’été 2019 et l’hiver 2020, l’écrivain François Beaune et le photographe Bruno Boudjelal ont séjourné plusieurs semaines à Satka, cité minière au cœur de l’Oural édifiée autour de l’exploitation de la magnésite.

Inventaire de voyage, 2020

Crossing Africa from North to South might not be considered an original idea. Yet, many explorers, travellers (Livingstone, Mungo Park, Savorgnan de Brazza) and before them many merchants (arabs, slave traders among others) have done it.

Bruno Boudjelal séries

The Invisible, 2020

« When last March the government decided to establish a curfew, I had no intention of photographing that period. On the first day, March 17, 2020, I went outside for an hour to do my daily walk. » Bruno Boudjelal

Bruno Boudjelal séries

Departure Landscapes, 2013

« The Departure Landscapes were undertaken as a continuation of the Harragas project in the coastal regions of Annaba and Oran where clandestine migrants set out for Europe. » Bruno Boudjelal

Bruno Boudjelal séries

Frantz Fanon, 2013

« When I first went to Martinique, where my wife was born, I felt an unsettling attachment to the place, a sensation of familiarity. My subsequent visits made this feeling all the stronger. » Bruno Boudjelal

Bruno Boudjelal séries

Movement, 2013

From 1993 to 2003, I couldn’t move around freely in Algeria and all the travelling I managed to do was limited to very specific and seemingly safe places: where my family lived (Sétif and the surrounding country) and at the homes of various friends (Algiers, Annaba, Bejaïa, Oran).

Bruno Boudjelal séries

Scrapbook (1993-2003)

Between 1993 and 2003, Bruno Boudjelal created the notebooks of his successive trips to Algeria. Between logbook and diary, these booklets testify both to a personal experience and to the reality of today's Algeria.

Bruno Boudjelal séries

Algeria from East to West, 2003

« ...I tried again to go wherever I could; but traveling in Algeria is, each time, a painful and difficult experience. It borders on the unspeakable. I always have the impression of falling into a bottomless pit from which I will never get out. » Bruno Boudjelal

Bruno Boudjelal séries

Sétif, Alger, 2002

Bruno Boudjelal séries

Benthala, The Places of a Massacre, 2002

« On the night of September 22-23, 1997, during a night of horror, more than 400 people were massacred in Bentalha. During my stays in Algeria following this massacre, I often thought of visiting these places. But this did not happen, for lack of courage or fear of not knowing what to do there. » Bruno Boudjelal

Bruno Boudjelal séries

Alger, 2001

"I feel very uncomfortable again in the country; the general climate seems extremely tense. I have an order for several newspapers, the subject is the revival of Algerian youth. » Bruno Boudjelal

Bruno Boudjelal séries

Journey at Setif (1993-1999)

I was always convinced that I was from here until one day in May 1993 when I found myself in Algeria. I had gone there with a total ignorance of what was happening there. I wanted to cross the country from east to west and try to find my family. My father, with whom I had an appointment the day before my departure so that he could give me information, did not come.

Bruno Boudjelal séries