Pictures
#black and white
#Skander Khif
#timber
#Tunisia
All photos © Skander Khif, shared with permission
Skander Khif was born in Tunis and first discovered concerning the artwork of images throughout a faculty undertaking. However his research finally took him down an engineering path earlier than he rediscovered his love for the medium and started specializing in its energy to seize the intricacies and variety of human relationships, communities, and locations all over the world. Now based mostly in Munich, he paperwork life in public areas to inform intimate visible tales.
For the previous two years, Khif has been pursuing a private undertaking revolving across the atmosphere and the local weather disaster. His focuses his lens on folks and what he describes as “their spirituality and their methods of dwelling,” testaments to the connection between place, time, and custom. Whereas he was touring by means of Tunisia, he stopped in a small fishing village close to Sidi Mechreg, a windswept place that sits very near Africa’s northernmost level.
“I’ve all the time been fascinated by particular timber,” Khif tells Colossal, “notably olive timber, as a result of their cultural and historic significance in locations like Tunisia.” Within the arid areas the place they develop, the timber—and the proverbial olive department—have lengthy been symbolic of peace, friendship, and power. “I had heard concerning the existence of such a tree on this area and went trying to find it with out realizing what I might discover,” Khif says. “That’s once I met 3am El Ayechi and his grandson below the tree.”
Khif’s collection, The Tree of Life, paperwork a typical afternoon for 3am El Ayechi—the 3am nickname interprets from Arabic to an endearing time period for “uncle”—who typically visits what locals check with as “the wind tree” due to its stalwart capability to resist sturdy, salty winds. Khif spent three hours with Ayechi within the morning, visited by buddies and kinfolk, listening to tales about his household, the area, and the tree, which he referred to as “Om Ezitouna.”
After Ayechi went for prayer, lunch, and siesta, he returned to his spot beneath the tree, the place the pair spent an extra three hours collectively. Ayechi described witnessing and collaborating within the Bizerte battle, a three-day disaster between Tunisian and French forces in 1961 shortly after Tunisia gained independence from France—within the very spot they sat.
“Encounters like this are exactly why I turned a photographer—assembly lovely souls, listening to their tales, and making buddies,” Khif says. “I typically discover myself invited into folks’s houses and lives, particularly within the south and the countryside. It’s essential to neglect the aim or mission whereas photographing and to benefit from the folks, their tales, and the second.”
Discover extra of the artist’s work on Behance, Instagram, and his web site.
#black and white
#Skander Khif
#timber
#Tunisia
Do tales and artists like this matter to you? Turn into a Colossal Member immediately and assist impartial arts publishing for as little as $5 monthly. You will join with a group of like-minded readers who’re captivated with modern artwork, learn articles and newsletters ad-free, maintain our interview collection, get reductions and early entry to our limited-edition print releases, and rather more. Be part of now!