Marc Garanger was born in 1935 and did his military service in Algeria in 1960. The French armed forces had decided to hand out ID cards to the locals it had cornered into "cluster villages" to control their movements. Garanger had to photograph up to 200 faces a day. He framed them like Edward S. Curtis had framed the aborigines he portrayed. Thus, he would tell the story of the violence that Algerian women were subject to when they were forced to remove their veil.
"That point-blank gaze they shot at me was the first sign of their speechless, violent protest." (1)
The Algerian women captured on film were placed in front of a white wall facing the photographer's and his camera's eye. Their bold stare and insolent beauty alone challenged authorities back then, and probe viewers today.
A young woman, her long brown hair loose and her veil on her shoulder, gazes fiercely at the objective, her dark gaze haunting the photographer and viewers. The black-and-white tones on the photograph continue the act of removal: they sharpen the contrast between the bare brown hair and the bright white wall and headscarves. The unleashed wavy locks cascading onto her shoulders are part of her dress and envelop her harmonious face, which is at once exposed and closed.
"I swore I'd throw these images into the world's face one day."(1)
Opposite this proud woman brimming exotic beauty, the photographer zoomed out to capture the scintillating jewels and voluptuous fabric. All those priceless enhancements, or ornaments, highlight this villager's indomitable pride, and turned the ID photo into an Orientalist portrait. Related to paintings by Delacroix, Chassériau and Matisse, Garanger's photos stem from a desiring eye that unveils, reveals and exposes the majesty that these beautiful rebels radiate.
(1) Marc Garanger, postscript of Femmes Algériennes 1960 (Anglet, Atlantica, 2002), p. 122.
