Circulations, 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).
The new phase in my work during recent years has concentrated on two themes.
Movement around the country. Firstly, my own moving through an Algeria that, after all, I didn’t know that well. But also the movement of Algerians themselves, who had for so long been constrained from travelling within their own country because of the dangers of the roads, the fake control points, the army raids, abductions and forced disappearances…
To question where I belonged in this territory. I had crossed Algeria from east
to west in February 2003 when I had been amazed to experience the sensation of a very strong link with the country, besides that which already existed with my family.
How to explain the familiarity and intimacy I felt for those places I’d never visited previously, with landscapes I hadn’t known before or even for people who’d been strangers to me? These feelings were profoundly disturbing and set in train a long period of self-questioning; so I decided to try to analyze and understand the cause.
These images, taken from many journeys across the country between 2009 and 2013, are an attempt at an explanation.”
Bruno Boudjelal
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