Algérie, clos comme on ferme un livre ?

With this title, borrowed from the words of the Algerian national anthem, Bruno Boudjelal illuminates a history that is as much his own as that of contemporary Algeria. Undoubtedly, it is also necessary to understand through this "closed as a book is closed" a slow process of intimate questioning for the artist who completes here the reappropriation of his personal history to confront himself with the present of a complex country.

It is now possible to travel to Algeria and Bruno Boudjelal takes advantage of this new freedom to explore the country from east to west, in a striking road movie that meets both the ghost of Frantz Fanon and young illegal immigrants on their way to Europe.
A photographic narrative whose singular chromy refers to the uncertainties of a people.

"We don't know by what subtle difference, but the journey from France to Algeria is an impossible one. The perspective is distorted. The look will always be opaque. It is necessary to radically change the scale, no longer to ask questions to the photograph, but simply to examine what emerges at the rhythm of transport. Instead of a Mediterranean clamour, we can only find silence and light. In capturing this silence reveals an analysis of the most insightful of the contemporary Maghreb. All the protagonists in the drama are affected by the same virus: boredom. At each stage of this journey, the same events occur again as one. The present is imposed in its immobility with an inescapable character that nothing dislocates. It takes place by itself out of internal necessity. It is the natural course of events that prevails over the desire for change. A world ends but does not end."

Excerpt from the text by François Cheval