Family pictures are ubiquitous. We all have family albums from the past or recent times. Undeniably, they construct our personal and family identity, which usually puts a veil of happiness over our history. French Moroccan artist Carolle Bénitah applied different strategies to deal with the family myth. In one series, she put a gold leaf on photographs found anonymously, and in another, she embroidered her family photographs. It became a process of catharsis. "Each hole I made in the pictures was like killing the demons of the past." 

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The Jamais je ne t'oublierai (I will never forget you) series contains old black-and-white photographs that depict anonymous people in various private situations. The portraits are blinded with gold leaf, rendering the unknown people even more mysterious. Who are they? When and where were the pictures taken? We do not know, and Carolle Bénitah does not have a clue because she obtained the old photographs from flea markets. "For me, it is like a sacrifice because the people had their own lives; they lived and loved, and one day, they disappeared, and suddenly, no one knows about them anymore." Bénitah used gold leaf because it is a precious metal, making the unknown persons valuable and everlasting, despite their anonymity. "Gold is stainless metal. So, it is there forever. It is the opposite of photography because prints are very fragile," she explains. The gold-covered faces will last forever, as well as their covered non-existence. "When you hide the faces, the golden surface acts like a mirror. It speaks about us too, because one day we will also disappear, even more so now that we have only digital photographs on the iPhone. We don't even print the pictures. All our memories will disappear. I covered the faces, making the projection stronger. I try to imagine who these persons were and what they looked like."

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Hidden family photos

A trigger for Carolle Bénitah to start the Jamais je ne t'oublierai series was that her parents didn't have many family pictures. "I didn't have any pictures of my parents before their marriage. My grandmother lost a child, which was painful for her. She kept the old family pictures hidden, so we could never see them." Recently, Bénitah got hold of the pictures that her aunt appeared to have kept safely. "Two years ago, I went to her house and asked to see the family pictures. She gave me some, and I scanned them. Finally, I have access to these pictures." The absence of family photographs produced a lack of her history. "I was always concerned as time passed. When you have growing children, you eventually forget how they were when they were little. I was very sad about this loss of memory." 
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By collecting the vintage photographs, Bénitah healed the wounds of her lack of family pictures. She chose photos that gave her a sense of déjà vu and the familiarity of happy moments. In this way, she invented other families and their bonds. The gold leaves gave the aged photographs more value and created the opportunity to identify with another person’s life. The sentence, I will never forget you, comes from a song for children. "They mean that the photograph tells you: I will never forget you, so I will remember who you are forever. But these days, we don't remember anymore. The gold leaf will last forever, unlike the pictures and the identity of the person depicted." 
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Photo Souvenirs

As many photo critics have observed, family pictures often do not tell the truth; they show a myth of a happy family. The Photo Souvenirs series shows family photos from the youth of the artist. When browsing through her family photographs, she was overwhelmed with emotion without understanding the exact source of the feeling. The pictures touched Bénitah's sense of identity uncannily. The myth appeared to be dissolved into a void of uncertainty and search for identity. She applied embroidery and beadwork to the photographs. Bénitah: "We build a concept of the ideal family that doesn't exist. Through the embroidery, I try to deconstruct this myth of the ideal family. I worked on my pictures from 40 years ago. I reinterpret them with my present experience and not through the eyes of myself as a child. The embroidery is a form of protest." 

Carolle Bénitah pierced the photographs with a needle, killing the demons of the past with each hole she made. "It is like an exorcism. I connected these painful points with my thread and needle, transforming the traces of my past. The needle and thread have a repair function. As a healing ritual, stitch by stitch, I sublime my intimate tremors into a cathartic work. This series has three parts: childhood, adolescence, and the grownup age." 

In one photo, we see the artist as a young girl, looking pensive and timid, sitting against a decorated wall. The embroidery follows the pattern of the wall and over the face of the child. The embroidery seems to metaphorically show the girl's thoughts, blending them with the family patterns on the wall. Bénitah explains the deeper meaning of the photo: "In this photo, I was a teenager. At that age, you want to explore the world, yet you are immobilised because it is frightening or difficult to understand. So, there are two opposite movements. And in this photo, I was stuck in this immobilism to such an extent that the wallpaper pattern is on my face."

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We all have families, and we generally believe you are supposed to be happy in your family. In our society, we construct a mental image of a happy family, which creates an identity of the family. "The happy family is a lie, but not completely. I love my family. There are always two sides to the family. It can be a safe place, but it can also be suffocating." One of the photos, called Seul au monde (Alone in the World), in the series is exemplary of this change of meaning. We see the young married couple with the extended family grouped around them. Bénitah embroidered all the faces of the family members with red thread, turning them into anonymous figures. Instead of being together, the couple is shown essentially alone. The red threads deconstruct the ideal family and especially her place within the family. "I wanted to give a more nuanced image of the family, showing two faces of the same coin. We are deeply influenced by our family, background, how we were raised, the school we went to, and our friends. It's difficult to be just yourself because you live in a society, so you must follow the habits and the rules."
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Initially, it was excruciating for the artist to embroider the pictures and make holes in them. "It was like a sacrilege because I was destroying the picture. It was like a voodoo practice. When I was working on the pictures, it was as if I was attacking the print. But in the end, I felt more peace within myself. It was a catharsis."

Carolle Bénitah was born in Casablanca (Maroc) and lives inMarseille (France). She started practising photography in the early 2000sfollowing some strong personal questioning. The fragile dimension of life imposed itself on her and photography acted as an existential crutch. Faced with a reality that is difficult to grasp, photography acted as a new organ of meaning. From the outset, she placed her practice in the field of the intimate. Today, her work deals with more open subjects such as family, desire, loss, mourning and confinement and touches on the universal.

https://www.carolle-benitah.com

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