The life of Leila Alaoui, a young and talented photographer and visual artist, tragically cut short. She passed away on 18th January after being fatally wounded during an Al Qaeda terrorist attack in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, where she was working on an Amnesty International project.
She was born in Paris in 1982, of French-Moroccan origin. She studied photography in New York. Her passion for this art coupled with her social activism inspired her to travel to numerous locations around the world, Morocco in particular, but also Lebanon, the United States, where she worked on cultural and social projects. Her work was dedicated to and represented the construction of identity and cultural diversity, often through stories of migration across the contemporary Mediterranean area.
Her images express social reality and are characterised by a visual language which combines narrative with an aesthetic sensitivity of the art. Her most recent and well-known projects include “Les Marocains”, dedicated to her country, her people, its cultures and traditions. It was recently exhibited in Paris at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie.
Inspired by Robert Frank’s work, The Americans, released in post-war America, Leila travelled all around Morocco, especially rural areas, with a mobile unit, and photographed women, men and children from different ethnic and tribal groups. The project was still under way and was to become a visual archive of Morocco’s traditions. In her portraits she strives to reveal the subjectivity of each person depicted.
Her tragic and early death is truly a big loss for all of us!
