Faten Gaddes

French Tunisian photographer Faten Gaddes, the director of the Un Cinquième interior design agency, continues to pursue a career as a photographer, working in an artistic and political vein, with an emphasis on the function of memory. In her recent series Mon Tunis Gaddes offers a portrait of Tunisian society today as seen through codes of the past. In Gaddes' studio all her models pose against the same backdrop, with a special set added for each portrait. This is a way, she says, of allowing her compatriots to reclaim their history: "Fifty years of dictatorship and autocracy robbed Tunisians of their past: Bourguiba abolished the period of the monarchy and Ben Ali abolished the Bourguiba period. Which explains why Tunisians are so unsure of their identity today."

Gaddes has repeatedly shown her work, particularly in Tunisia, France at the IMA-Arab World Institute, Bamako Encounters, Portugal, Gulbenkian Foundation, Algiers, the Modern Art Museum MAMA, Rome, Villa Borghese, Berlin, IFA Gallery, New York, United Nations headquarters, Paris and the Quai Branly Museum, Photoquai in Marseille MUCEM.

Courtesy of the Artist