Femmes Algeriennes

Your Mirror: Portraits from the ICP Collection
Section: Social change
Twenty-five-year-old Marc Garanger was drafted into mandatory military service during the French-Algerian War (1954–62). Reluctant to take part in active battle, he worked as a French army photographer for two years. During one mission, he was ordered to take identification photographs of thousands of villagers. Garanger photographed two thousand women in ten days. The women were placed against a white backdrop and ordered to remove their veils, the ultimate humiliation for religious women who would normally only do so in the privacy of their homes. Aware of his participation in the forcible
documentation of these captive women, Garanger took on the role of a witness and reflected his own resentment of an abusive war. His portraits show the women’s fierce
hostility and their powerful resistance, as they address the perpetrator and defiantly gaze into the camera.