Ahram Online
The second year of the Mediterranean Photography Festival(PhotoMed) will be open until 17 June, highlighting Morocco, while Egyptian Nermine Hammam displays her works among international photographers
In its second year, the Mediterranean Photography Festival – aka PhotoMed – held between 24 May and 17 June in France welcomes Morocco as the featured country and the Italian, Massimo Vitali, as its guest of honour.
The selection of works from Morocco mixes young photographers and artists from older generations. It also brings together photographers based in Morocco or partially based there.
They describe their dreams of elsewhere and raise questions about mobility and distance. Among the Moroccan artists are: Daoud Aoulad-Syad, Hassan Hajjaj, Leila Sadel, Khalil Nemmaoui, Laila Hida, Mehdi Chafik, Yasmine Lar and Hamza Halloubu.
Among international artists participating in the festival are Jacques Henri Lartigue, Bernard Plossou and Bernard Faucon among many other renowned photographers from France, Massimo Cristaldi from Italy, Paris Petridis, Athina Kazolea and Dimitris Koilalous from Greece, along with others.
PhotoMed exhibits, for the first time in Europe, Meyerowitz’s first black-and-white series alongside his colour work, which includes an unknown series that he shot last year in Provence, France.
From Egypt, Nermine Hammam exhibits over 40 images, drawn from separate series of Alchemy (2010), Ma’at (2011), Uppekha (2011) and her latest series Unfolding (2012).
According to a press release: “Across these works, Hammam examines the constructed nature of reality and, by extension, that of the iconic image which is fabricated in our collective conscious, achieving a status of near universal recognition and appeal. Each in their own way, her works probe that dual existence of the iconic image as both sign and symbol capable of transcending its initial time-specific, two-dimensional state to attain an eternal, quasi-religious significance becoming an object of worship and of ritual. Hammam’s work also explores the irony of the iconic image that, in its very universality, outlasts both its subject and producer becoming entirely removed from the original events that triggered its creation.”
The festival also pays tribute to Walter Carone (1920-1982), who was a staff photographer at Paris Match who became famous for covering the first Cannes film festivals after WWII.
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