“Mectoub” (In the shadows of the Arab Spring)

An unfulfilled love story had left me feeling fragile and this new work was to be an intimate journey. Lasting three years, it took me from North Africa to the Middle East, in order to look into male identity.

I set off to further my travels into countries which had long since been close to my heart, Morocco, Egypt and beyond. Algiers, Beirut, Ramallah... I walk through the city from streets to alleyways, cafés to backyards, searching. Hidden places, abandoned houses, forgotten shorelines, these are the places where men will come, at my invitation, for a photographic tête-à-tête. I want to photograph them in all their complexity, fragility, sensuality and freedom. My photographs explore the reality of these regions from a personal standpoint. I stage them, with traces, documentary aspect and pose, enabling me to blend testimony with intimacy.

The “Mectoub” series, always interlacing portraits with places, question concepts of desire, masculinity, identity, territory, and history. They do so in the context of societies in which issues of individual freedom, gender and sexuality form part of the aspirations at the root of the widespread changes currently sweeping across these countries.

“I would like to think that the lives of the Arabic peoples and their relationship with themselves has been altered. It is their turn to speak out. Take to the streets. They have the means to express themselves and stand up for their rights. Their dreams. Their desire for justice and dignity. Their will to become free citizens, protected by the country’s laws. Freed from submission. Moving on. The debate. About freedom. Theirs. That of others. At present, the Arab world is a fertile breeding ground for all these ideas.” (Abdellah Taïa)

Scarlett Coten