Ahlam Shibli احلام شبلي

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© Ahlam Shibli



Trauma

Corrèze, France, 2008–09
series of 48 photographs, 38 x 57.7 cm; 57.7 x 38 cm, gelatine silver prints; chromogenic prints



Taking as its starting point commemorations of the Résistance uprising against the Nazis in Tulle (Corrèze, France) and the occupation forces' murderous repercussions, events that lasted from June 7 to 9, 1944, Trauma is constructed around the fact that one and the same population, in certain cases even the same individuals, who resisted occupation by the Germans and suffered from their atrocities, waged, a few years later, colonial wars in Indochina and Algeria against peoples who, in their turn, claimed independence.

Early on June 9, 1944, the SS rounded up more than two thousand men from Tulle, aged sixteen to sixty, and later that day hanged ninety-nine of them from lamp posts and balconies. Another 149 men were deported to German concentration camps from where 101 never returned.

Memorials and ceremonies honor those who died in the First and Second World Wars: soldiers, fighters of the Résistance, and civilian victims of the Nazis, together with members of the French army who lost their lives in the colonial wars in Indochina and North Africa.

The images show various residents of Corrèze: former members of the Résistance, descendents of the hanged and deported from June 9, former French fighters in the colonial wars, Pieds-Noirs, as well as an Algerian collaborator, a man who was taken to France as a forced laborer from Indochina, a second generation Indochinese, a lady of Algerian descent who considers herself French, and recent immigrants from Algeria.



This work has been produced with the support of Peuple et Culture Corrèze.