AN EVENING WITH KHALIL NEMMAOUI.

By Nii B. Andrews.

For the renowned Moroccan photographer Khalil Nemmaoui, a photograph is something which comes from inside/ within and enables you to express something tangible.

He explains, “When I shoot I don’t close my eyes. I want to see what is outside of the frame. This helps me to compose my pictures and be a better storyteller.”

Nemmaoui prefers the intricate windings associated with shooting in analog; he confesses that the process of teasing and playing with light has an almost mystical tinge to it.

The process is much slower and takes a lot more thought.

Last Friday, we spent an interesting evening listening in to an extensive conversation between Nemmaoui and the art historian, Juan Asis Palao Gomez at the Comptoir des Mines Gallery (CMOOA) in Marrakech under the visionary leadership of Hicham Dauodi.

This was then followed by an explanatory walk through the lower floors of the gallery where his photographs had been elegantly displayed.

The program constituted the inauguration of a series of FOCUS encounters involving artists who have collaborated with CMOOA in the past on multiple projects.

Nemmaoui’s photographs proffer a visual language that traverses from melancholy tones to the stark barrenness and silence of vast open bare places in nature.

The temporary or fleeting essence of what is present is alluded to by derelict buildings, old decrepit cars, crooked street lamps and even discarded gas cylinders.

A towering solitary tree by a modest, small, old house prompts us again to ask ourselves questions about permanence, change, decay and space time.

There was one group of photos assembled together that was particularly moving. 

This was the series dubbed HIPPOCRATIC OATH; it depicted health care workers- the front line soldiers in the pandemic, many paid the ultimate price and in some countries today are fighting for a living wage- what a world!

These tragic facts were particularly emphasised by Nemmaoui’s technique which gave an etheral and poetic quality to the images. The series constitutes a majestic tribute to the medical profession.

The same old process, the double exposure technique was utilized by Nemmaoui to highlight the feeling of permanent exile in another series of photos – VISIBLE INVISIBLES. 

In that series he focuses on the workers from the Maghreb who came to France after the Second World War – today, they are elderly and tired from life long hard work albeit still maintaining a dignified forbearance.

But they find themselves living in a permanent house of exile; no longer really from here, nor really from there.

The photos depict them as ghostly silhouettes, as if caught between two worlds. 

Are they like all diasporans, eternal prisoners of “a temporary that lasts”?

Khalil Nemmaoui’s photographic work is represented in various collections, including those of the Mohammed VI Modern and Contemporary Art Museum, Fondation CDG, Fondation Attijari Wafabank, Fondation Alliances and the Arab World Institute in Paris.

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