How does one evoke a tragedy that is paradoxically made invisible through too many images? For three years, in Europe and Middle East, I met Syrian refugees willing to tell me their stories and share their private photographs. These artefacts have, like their owners, survived perilous journeys. In the course of my meetings, I wrote the stories of these vernacular documents and those who entrusted them to me.
The images I collected show daily life in Syria and in exile. They are not very different from the ones from our family albums or mobile phones. At the crossroads of intimacy and History, they allow us to imagine with empathy lives of ordinary people turned upside down by extraordinary events.
The narritive, combining my words with their images creates an impression of a broken puzzle reconstituted but perforated. Such is the precarity of Talashi, whose title translates from Arabic to Fragmentation, Erosion or Disappearance.
Talashi, the book
Publisher: Atelier EXB / Éditions Xavier Barral (Paris)
Octobrer 2021 – bilingual French-English
Softcover, 16,5 x 23,5 cm
128 pages – 55 color photographs
ISBN : 978-2-36511-318-2
Talashi, the film
Documentary | 2019 | 4’30 | 16:9 | STEREO
Editing : Saskia Berthod I Texts : Alexis Cordesse I Voice : Éric Génovèse (La Comédie française) I VO : French – subtitles : English
© Alexis Cordesse
Talashi, the installation
108 ink jet prints on uncoated wove paper Rivoli white 240 gr
1 sound track (English version : 6’45).
Grant & prize
・Grant for documentary photography 2019, Centre national des arts plastiques (CNAP), FR
・Shortlisted Luma Dummy Award Rencontres d’Arles 2020
・Top 10 Photobooks of the year 2021, 1000 words, UK
Festivals selections
・Arles Photo Festival 2019, FR
・Fotografia Europea, Reggio Emilia, 2022, IT
Collection
・National museum of the history of immigration, Paris