My motivation ♡ Maghreb Photography Contest ♡

My work grows from a deeply personal, existential quest. I was raised in Belgium, without knowing who my father was. All I knew was that he was “a dark-skinned man.” No name, no story, just an absence that clung to me like a silent shadow for nearly fifty years.

In 2020, I took a DNA test. It marked the beginning of an unpredictable journey that led me to Algeria, in the heart of the Maghreb. A country I had never seen, yet that felt strangely familiar, as if it had always lived inside me. After two years of online research, I travelled there with a few scattered puzzle pieces and the quiet hope of finding my father. What I found was not a clear answer yet, but something perhaps even more valuable. Faces with eyes like mine, warm hands that held me as if they knew me, and silences that were both awkward and comforting.

Back in Belgium, I carried a small suitcase of DNA-kits. Two months later, one of them revealed the truth. I finally knew who my father was. But I was too late. He had just passed away. And fate had one last twist, he had lived in Belgium since the Algerian independence and was buried only thirty kilometres from my home.

Later, I returned to Algeria, no longer searching blindly, but walking in his footsteps. I followed his traces in the landscape, in the stories of his/my family, and in the way people looked at me. Many had warned me: “Searching in Arab culture is nearly impossible.” But the opposite proved true. I was welcomed with warmth, wonder, and genuine recognition.

Throughout the journey, my camera was my quiet companion. Photography helped me express what was too painful or elusive to say. I captured glimpses of recognition in gestures, in cracked walls, and in a culture both foreign and familiar.

The images I create are open. They speak of distance and discovery, of cultural contrasts that can also build bridges. Of how one can be both stranger and kin.

That fragile connection, across borders of land and identity, is what I hope to share through my images.

I'm currently working on a photobook where image and text enter into dialogue. I hope to complete it within the year.