Making the reality linger

“Rabble”, Nicolas Sarkozy called them in 2005. “Gangsters”. As France’s minister of the interior he was reacting in his customary brusque way to an outbreak of unrest in the Paris suburbs and the “hoodlums” behind it.

When photographer Mohammad Bourouissa heard these comments of the then minister, he thought there are other ways of summing up life in those difficult, deprived parts of the city, and began chronicling that bleak existence. He did not flinched from capturing the violence that outraged Sarkozy, or the unease and fear of the people, most of whom are immigrants. The result was a collection of photographs, entitled “Pérephérique”, one of the 12 shortlisted for the £65,000 (Dh383,327) Prix Pictet photography prize, the theme of which for 2012 was power.

It is a subject open to interpretation: American photographer Robert Adams covered the effect of deforestation in the United States in bleak black and white; Philippe Chancel had images from the terrible aftermath of the Japanese tsunami; and Luc Delahaye of France won the top prize with a collection that presents by way of contrast a lunch during the Davos economic summit with acts of protest by desperate refugees.

Unlike Sarkozy, Bourouissa does not provide an answer. He shows the power of the mob, the threats of the gangster, and the unspoken influence of the state which has not been able to get to the root of unrest or, some would say, has lacked the commitment to do so.

Although he now lives in Marseilles, the photographer says he understands the suburbs and is motivated by both political and artistic possibilities.

He says: “I represent what I see. It is an act in itself, I think.”

His images, created between 2004 and 2008, are set not just on the periphery of Paris society but also in the communities that are outside of the Pérephérique — the motorway which rings the city and separates it from its suburbs. What many who thronged London’s Saatchi Gallery to hail the winner in October might not have been able to decipher through the crowds is that the images are not of real life but, rather, are painstakingly posed.

But why? Why not photograph the real thing? “What I am after is that fleeting tenth of a second when the tension is at its most extreme,” says Algerian-born Bourouissa, 34. “In my pictures, the moments of tension are always manufactured. I’m looking to produce, to set up a tension, and it is this tension, which is the main subject of my photographs. The scene is played out as the way to achieve that.”

His aim is to transform real objects or situations into objects of art by what he calls “emotional geometry”. This involves the two key aspects of his work: the composition and the interplay of eyes and the power struggles he stages within that framework.

Take “La République”, which shows what looks like a group of young immigrant men preparing for a fight — perhaps among themselves, maybe with another gang or against the police. It appears that they are about to desecrate the French flag or maybe it is being waved in ironic defiance at a state which does not care. The scene is clearly posed and produced, as Bourouissa would say, through a composition process akin to painting. Indeed, he cites classic painters such as Caravaggio and Géricault as inspirations. The flag held high on a shed roof is a nod to Eugene Delacroix’s “Liberty Leading the People” (1831), which is reproduced in every French school history book and can be seen as a symbol of the fight of these ghetto dwellers for freedom and equality.

His working method is to start by taking pictures and study the results. He sketches out a draft of an idea before he begins work on the final image. His cast is drawn from people he knows or through a contact and he spends time with them so that they accept him and his ideas. “Only after this is done will I go back to the actual locations and ask the people there to position themselves in the space and play out a scene for me,” he says. “It depends on the images and their complexity. There is also a delay before we see the ideas emerge and become clear.

“Sometimes I will be influenced by one of my subjects coming up with a suggestion or improvisation which is better than what I had in my draft.”

He keeps his equipment pared down, using only the flash or natural light, and draws on the work of such photographers as Jeff Wall and Philip-Lorca diCorcia, both of whom have done staged compositions. He also cites rap as an influence, which, given the subject matter, seems entirely appropriate.

His compositions work better with fewer people and less action as, for example, “Le Hall”, which has much of the studied look of a diCorcia.

The more you look at “La République”, the more staged and more unreal — and therefore the less intense — it becomes. But the brutality of “La Prise”, which shows a young man tied up and held to the floor by anonymous policemen and a woman, is disturbing. We see only their legs. This, by the way, is the only sighting of a female in the collection and that too only from the waist down. “I am aware of that but it was not my subject,” Bourouissa says.

The incipient violence of “Le Fenetre” and “Le Telephone” capture the volatile nature of these young men’s lives, the simmering violence, the danger, but two of the most effective — the most tense — are the least active.

“Le Miroir” is set in a wasteland with a gang in a circle, their backs reflected in a pool of dirty water. There is something threatening about their stillness. And “Le Reflet” captures the isolation of the world beyond the Pérephérique with its hunched figure sitting on a disused television with a wall of other discarded TVs and computer screens in front of him. The background is of an empty park and high-rise blocks. Nothing to do, no work — the screens mock the lost figure with their blankness.

Bourouissa keeps the finished images hanging in his studio for several months before he exhibits them because, he says, “it is very important that I avoid relying on the first impression. I always delay choosing the images before I can be sure whether or not I want to show them.” In the “Perepherique” series he rejected five out of the thirty originals.

Now Bourouissa is planning a project on the work of the German photographer August Sander (1876–1964), best known for his portraits, “People of the 20th Century”, which captured a cross-section of society during the Weimar Republic.

There is a connection between the German’s uncompromising work and the edgy, uncomfortable world of social commentary inhabited by Bourouissa. As he says, “it is a project that is both photographic and sculptural and is about being unemployed. I love doing graphics and I love this universe, this social dimension.”

Richard Holledge is a writer based in London.

Sidebar:

Mohammad Bourouissa lives and works in Marseille. After graduating in visual arts from the Sorbonne in 2004 and from the photography department of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs de Paris, he trained at the Studio National des Arts — Le Fresnoy from 2008 to 2010. But he has been developing a fine art photography practice since 2002.

Bourouissa has been awarded many prizes for his photographic work, including the Prix Fondation Blachère, Apt (2010); the Aide à la première exposition, Cnap (2008); and the first prize at Les Rencontres d’Arles, Le Off. Since 2008, his work has been shown at the MAMVP/Palais in France, de Tokyo in Paris, the New York New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Finish Museum of Photography in Helsinki, and the Central Farming Correios of Rio de Janeiro. He has taken part in the 6th Berlin Biennial, the Architecture and Photography Biennial of La Cambre in Brussels, the Algiers Biennial of Contemporary Art and the Rencontres de Bamako in Mali. His work forms part of many collections, including Maison Européenne de la Photographie, the Finnish Museum of Photography and the Weng Collection.