“The reception of the exhibition by families of immigrant origins from the neighbourhood has been incredible, far beyond my expectations”

Dalia Al-Dujaili: After showing the work in Rencontres d’Arles, why did it feel right to collaborate with Union de la Jeunesse Internationale in Paris this year?

Jean-Marie Donat: First and foremost, it is important to put the photographs presented in the exhibition Ne M’oublie Pas into context. These photographs come from the archives of Studio Rex, a small photo studio in Marseille located in the Belsunce district, wedged between the old port and the Saint Charles train station. This is a very working-class neighbourhood that for decades welcomed migrants arriving by boat or train. For almost 80 years, Studio Rex documented the passage of these migrants who stopped for a brief stay in Belsunce before leaving to work all over France. Many of these men eventually settled in Paris, in the Goutte d’Or, Barbès district neighbourhood in the 18th arrondissement of Paris.

After Arles, Berlin, and Marseille, the exhibition Ne M’oublie Pas is also coming to Barbès at the invitation of Youssouf Fofana, founder of the Union de la Jeunesse Internationale (United Youth International). Ne M’oublie Pas is being shown in the former TATI stores, a huge “ocean liner” of low-priced clothing and household accessories that was frequented assiduously by the working classes and immigrant families living in the neighbourhood for more than 40 years. So, this location makes perfect sense. I couldn’t have dreamed of a better place to present my work than this legendary place. The UJI gave me carte blanche, and I am grateful to them for that. Fifty years later, these photos have followed the same path as their owners. The reception of the exhibition by families of immigrant origins from the neighbourhood has been incredible, far beyond my expectations.

DA: Tell me about the story behind Ne M’oublie Pas – how did the story emerge, and what drew you to it?

JMD: My artistic practice is variable; it can be purely the product of my imagination, or it can be part of a political and social reflection, which is the case for the subject that interests us today. Ne M’oublie Pas does not tell the story of Studio Rex: by presenting this archive, I am showing a history of immigration told by the protagonists themselves. These intimate photos bring to the forefront women and men who have been invisible for too long.  If we take the time to look closely, we see the heartbreak of separation, the wait for a hypothetical return, a hope for the family left behind. Above all, we understand, and this is very important, that for these men, the ticket was a one-way ticket. Their survival and that of their families depended on it. The Studio Rex archives provide an implicit reading of Maghreb and sub-Saharan immigration in the 1960s to 1990s.

DA: I loved the curation and design of the show in Paris – can you tell me how the design aspects were developed? Why did you go in this direction for the curation? For example, the light box in the second room, and the ID photos stuck to the wall individually.

JMD: Not being a photographer myself, I use the photographic medium, and mainly vernacular photographs, as material for my creations. The book, the performance, the exhibition is the work itself. For this exhibition, the scenography is fundamental. Putting more than a thousand documents – “wallet” photographs, photomontages and colourisations, administrative photographs, and studio photographs – “to music” is above all a work of reflection. The multitude of photos that make up the archive (more than 400,000 prints and negatives) must serve to demonstrate the point.

The three monumental frames composed of more than a thousand “wallet” photos (souvenir photos of loved ones who remained in the country) complement the light boxes displaying the negatives of more than a thousand portrait photos taken in France for administrative purposes. The enlargements of 16 portraits made from two 13/18 negatives were not chosen for their aesthetic appeal. These 16 portraits (one woman and fifteen men) explicitly show the male majority that made up the immigration of the 1970s.

The film Les fantômes de Belsunce [The Ghosts of Belsunce] consists of 30 portraits assembled in a morphing sequence lasting over 20 minutes. Thanks to the imperceptible transition from one character to another, this film demonstrates in a very simple way that we see but do not look at these men who are part of our daily lives.

The photos in the display case are framed with boxes of photographic paper (Ilford, Kodak, Agfa). Grégoire, the photographer at Studio Rex, kept the negatives of administrative portraits in these boxes for over 40 years.

DA: Finally, what do you hope the audience will take away from this show?

JMD: Showing people what they need to see to understand, revealing the humanity that emanates from these photographs from the past, will, I hope, serve to change the way we see things today. That is what I have tried to do with this exhibition.

Ne M’oublie Pas is on show at Union de la Jeunesse Internationale, Paris, until 4 January, 2026. The book is available via delpire & co

“You watch an 18-year-old navigating bigger emotions, bigger spaces, intimate relationships”

Dalia Al-Dujaili: Why was this the right moment to publish Davide’s journals?  

Francesca Sorrenti: Now felt like the right time because I could finally approach these journals with a different state of mind, the material was simply too intimate, now I can see it as an essential part of his legacy, and this generation is ready to see him without the noise around his story. We are living in a moment when people crave the real thing, and emotional depth, especially in contrast to the digital world. Davide’s handwriting, his collages, the way he documented his friends and the city – all of it resonates more powerfully now. The journals speak directly to today’s thirst for knowledge, for something real.  

DA: You’ve established a publishing relationship with IDEA. What makes IDEA the right publisher to work with Davide’s imagery and journals?  

FS: IDEA is the right publisher because they understand the human element of youth culture, photography, and fashion in a way few others do. They immediately recognised Davide’s voice and the energy of his generation, and they treated his work with the respect and precision it deserves, not as nostalgia, but as living culture. 

DA: How does your personal relationship with your late son help to shape the pages we see? 

FS: My relationship with Davide shaped the edit simply because I knew him as a teenager, not as the cultural figure he later became after his passing. I could separate the noise from what was really his voice. When creating the book, I focused on keeping the pages exactly as he created them, honest, fast, unfiltered, without imposing my own interpretation. My role was to protect the integrity of what he wrote and saw, not to rewrite it. 

DA: What can we expect from the proceeding Volumes? 

FS: The next volume and the last of his journals continue the same approach. Davide’s pages are shown exactly as he made them. As Journal 2 progresses, you see him change. His understanding of photography becomes more technical and deliberate, and he starts stepping  deeper into the gritty side of downtown New York and the ’90s fashion world. His circle widens  skaters, models, musicians, young artists, other photographers and an important girlfriend  enters the picture, adding another layer to his personal world. You watch an 18-year-old navigating bigger emotions, bigger spaces, intimate relationships, and a growing creative ambition. Together, the volumes show how quickly he was evolving and how naturally he was finding his place in that moment. Journal Two is the evolution of Davide Sorrenti.

Davide Sorrenti Journals: Volume 1 1994-1995 is available at IDEA

“I want you to be confronted with your own desire and the frustration that comes from not finding what you’re looking for”

Afshar embarked on a research project on de Clérambault’s archive at Musée du quai Branly, asking to access the works through the digital repository. Saving the images she wished to use, she later returned to them, only to find that the museum software had protected the files, creating crops capturing only a fraction of the image, around the cursor where she had clicked. This created an unexpected effect; a mosaic of hundreds of image fragments. 

These ‘screengrabs’ make up The Fold, now on show at the Musée du quai Branly as part of Afshar’s first monographic exhibition in France. Performing the Invisible comprises two bodies of work – Speak the Wind, which was published as a book by Mack in 2021, and The Fold, published by Loose Joints in September 2025. 

Afshar’s project potently reveals that the archive is never a neutral collection of documents, but rather a constructed apparatus shaped by power, desire and the political conditions in which it was made. De Clérambault’s Morocco photographs may at first appear to be anthropological or ethnographic studies. Yet Afshar shows that what they really expose is the photographer himself – his compulsions, his gaze, his inability to see the women as anything more than surfaces for projection. The Fold, says Afshar, is not about the nature or environment of Islamic women, but rather the one who sees and tries to represent them.

“I found it fascinating to look at the archive because when you look at these images, they show you nothing about the subject,” Afshar explains. “The image-maker is so removed from the context that these bodies are situated in… You don’t get anything from the images but what you get is an idea of the image-maker.” 

At first, the cropped details of fabric folds and shreds of gesture that Afshar accidentally obtained were frustrating. But eventually she came to see the accident as a gift. “It’s like zooming into de Clérambault’s obsession with the fold of the fabric, but also the inaccessibility of the archive,” she says. By enlarging these fragments in the darkroom, she was able to return the material to the analogue processes de Clérambault once used. The result is both tactile and forensic, a deliberate dissection of his gaze.

Afshar stresses that the work is not about reproducing the French photographs, but about dismantling them. “This is a project that works against the images that it’s referencing,” she says. “You would see the cover [of the book] and assume this is what you’re going to get – veiled women. But after flipping through, you soon realise that what you’re looking for is not there. I want you to be confronted with your own desire and the frustration that comes from not finding what you’re looking for.” 

This strategy positions The Fold in dialogue with Afshar’s broader practice. Speak the Wind deals with ritual, possession and the unseen – winds believed to inhabit bodies in the Strait of Hormuz, between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. Both projects circle around invisibility and absence, and question how photography can render what is normally unseen. In one case, it is the invisible force of the winds; in the other, the invisible but ever-present colonial gaze. Afshar also draws attention to how such images still shape political life. “The obsession towards the bodies of women, in particular Islamic women, is often used as a symbol,” she explains. “To show the oppression of certain places, or the barbarity of certain places, to justify the bombing or occupation of certain countries.” The female body – veiled, unveiled, disciplined – becomes a site on which power is asserted. Patriarchal forces inside colonised nations use women’s bodies to resist, while colonial powers use them to legitimise conquest.

This double-bind is particularly acute in France, where the veil remains a flashpoint of debate. Afshar links this fixation to a deeper historical wound. During the Algerian War of Independence, Frantz Fanon noted that women’s veils could conceal weapons; bombs were transported into French venues by women, little suspected by the authorities. For Afshar, contemporary bans on veils in France may not simply be about secularism or feminism, but about a lingering trauma rooted in that revolutionary history. 

Afshar describes her project as “a forensic investigation of the psyche of de Clérambault”, but adds that he is more than an individual; he embodies the colonial gaze. To step into her installation is, she suggests, like stepping into his mind. “In Being John Malkovich there’s a door that lets you see the world through his gaze,” she says. “When I started making the work I was thinking about that film a lot.” 

The installation opens with a short animation of de Clérambault’s death, his body slumped in his fabric-filled room, gun by his side, mannequins draped in hayek around him. From there, viewers enter a mirrored corridor in which archival images are printed on panels. As you look, you also see yourself reflected into their surfaces, implicating your own gaze in the act of looking. A sound installation deepens the immersion, while video works present interviews with five scholars dissecting de Clérambault’s persona from different perspectives. 

“Such archives are never about the subject. They’re about the purpose the colonial photography was serving – to classify, to justify colonisation.” This is why theorists such as Ariella Aïsha Azoulay have described the camera’s shutter as an “imperial shutter”, summing up how, from the beginning, photography served empire. 

Afshar does not let the archive rest silently in its drawers. By fracturing it further, reprinting it, and forcing audiences to confront their own expectations, she turns the colonial gaze back on itself. The Fold is not simply about de Clérambault or a past gaze, it is about the structures of seeing that persist today in politics, the media and our own imaginations. 

When Performing the Invisible closes, The Fold will enter the collection of the Musée du quai Branly, where future researchers may return to it as part of the long conversation around archives, images and power. “It makes me very happy to know that it will be part of that history,” Afshar says. “Someone else could come and have a dialogue maybe 100 years later.” 

Her work raises a final, unsettling question: what do we really see when we look at images of veiled women? Do we see the subjects themselves, or only our own projections staring back? Afshar’s answer is to hand the question to the viewer, mirrored in the folds of fabric, fractured across thousands of tiny fragments. 

Performing the Invisible is on show at Musée du quai Branly, Paris, until 25 January 2026. The Fold is published by Loose Joints

Niyū Yūrk is structured somewhat chronologically but also tries to group work into loose themes, using only material from the library’s Middle Eastern collections. Using photography as well as film, sound and print media, Abid says she “wanted it to be a proud celebration of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) cultures, of their contributions in different fields, from businesses that serve daily lives of New Yorkers, to the earliest music recordings in New York City.” She references artists such as Iranian-American theatre director Reza Abdoh, “and these are things that you probably don’t expect when you go see an exhibition like this. You probably expect it to be these timelines of immigration to New York. But I wanted to show the breadth of all these contributions and in areas where you probably didn’t expect MENA people to be at the forefront of theatre or electro-acoustic music.”

This celebratory tone is carried throughout the show to the photographic series by Mahka Eslami, Bodega Boys, highlighting moments of daily life and joy in Yemeni corner stores around New York City. Elsewhere in the exhibition, there are clips from In My Own Skin, which documents the aftermath of 9/11 as experienced by five young Arab women living in New York.

When Abid began her role in 2022, she was asked to identify the library’s earliest Arabic diasporic materials from New York City, items that have been collected since the founding of the Oriental Division in 1897. The institution’s initial request for the exhibition – to focus on early 20th-century immigration – felt too narrow for Abid. “I considered that wouldn’t be inclusive of the more diverse waves that came later after Christian Syrian immigration,” she explains. “I really wanted to tell that story, especially at this moment now when there is a need to be seen, to be represented in these institutions.” Her insistence expanded the exhibition all the way to the present day. 

The process also raised questions about institutional responsibility. The library, Abid says, has taken seriously the matter of who shapes these histories. “We’re a public library and the library had to fight and advocate to have a Middle Eastern curator,” she says. “It was a priority… to have someone from a Middle Eastern background to tell these stories.” That work includes addressing inaccuracies inherited from earlier cataloguing. Images by immigrant-era photographers like Lewis Hine and Augustus Sherman often arrived with limited information. “These photographs… were collected as they were described by these photographers,” Abid explains. “But today we’re in 2025. We have curators with subject expertise. We also hear from the public.”

One example is a portrait long labelled “Armenian Jew,” corrected only after the man’s descendants contacted a museum exhibiting the photograph. “They said this is our great-grandfather and he’s a Yemeni Jewish rabbi from Jerusalem,” Abid says, and the record was later updated. “That’s very important,” she adds, “because all these identities are conflated under one label. It’s our responsibility to complicate these histories… and that’s also what the exhibition is about.”

Some histories required different approaches altogether. Abid searched for materials documenting the Muslim experience in New York after 9/11, a defining period for many MENA communities, and found few. “Our collections had gaps in that regard,” she says. But she discovered In My Own Skin. “It allowed me to tell that story,” she says. “The experience of those who were identified as Muslims in that moment of New York history that extends to the present day.”

Working with early ethnographic portraits also brings mixed feelings for her. “Yes, they are very ethnographic and they sometimes bother me,” she admits. But she finds value in using them to address cataloguing practices and inherited narratives. “What do we do with these materials? I love the challenge to almost subvert them and use them in a different way… than the stories we’ve heard already.”

Visitors have been responding strongly. “I was surprised to see friends or visitors getting very emotional,” Abid says. “They said we never felt seen or represented and here we’re on the walls of a New York institution.” For many, the library’s grand architecture can feel imposing; the exhibition seems to loosen that. “I’ve never seen this much diversity in the building,” Abid notes. “People who might feel intimidated by that majestic building… now see themselves here.”

And in that shift, the exhibition speaks not only to MENA communities but to many others whose histories in the city have been under-recognised. These are stories of contribution, erasure, cultural work carried out quietly, brilliance that has gone uncredited. “Absolutely,” Abid says when I suggest the show connects to a broader immigrant experience – the hidden labour, the silenced identities, the people whose influence shapes New York while their stories remain unnamed. Here, those stories are given space. The Algerian man on the wall is no longer a footnote. 

Niyū Yūrk: Middle Eastern and North African Lives in the City is on until 08 March, 2026 in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building at the New York Public Library

“If we have more working women photographers in Iraq, we don’t just achieve greater gender equality within Iraq’s photography industry, we also gain greater equity in storytelling”

Over two intensive workshop days in Baghdad in November 2024, Garthwaite worked closely with IFP members on everything from image sequencing and pitching, to navigating identity through the camera. “We had women joining from around Iraq, supported by family members,” she says. “When women gather, we uplift one another, and we seek solutions. We soothe one another. Creativity is not reserved for the lucky few; it’s within us all. What we often need is the confidence to pursue it, and this is a driving force within IFP.”

For Raghad Kisam, a film-maker and storyteller with over eight years of experience, IFP offered “a real boost of confidence” and a community rooted in a shared mission. “I deeply believe in the power of visual storytelling to create change, challenge stereotypes and celebrate resilience,” she says.

Her work often draws on memory, culture and identity, creating personal narratives that speak to larger truths. One of her most poignant projects, Unseen Bonds, explores the impact of decades of war on family relationships in Iraq. “I have only one digital photograph with my late father,” Kisam says. “Because of the wars, our shared memories were never captured and that absence stayed with me.”

She reimagines a family album that never was, constructing images from light, objects, and the quiet spaces of memory. “Unseen Bonds reflects how conflict doesn’t just destroy infrastructure, it quietly reshapes how we remember, connect and grieve across generations.”

This kind of intimate, emotionally layered storytelling is emblematic of IFP’s ethos. For Salam, her first documentary project Shadow – developed during a visual journalism workshop with VII Academy – marked a milestone in her practice. 

“It explores what is expected from women versus what they truly want to pursue,” she explains. “I love this project deeply, it was my very first documentary work.” While the creative energy is palpable, the challenges remain stark. “One of the main challenges is the lack of genuine support and trust among individuals,” Kisam points out. “We need to build real connections based on encouragement rather than competition or undermining each other’s work.” She also stresses the “major need for financial support, especially for long-term projects”.

Garthwaite explains that greater opportunities for women create a ripple effect for Iraqi storytelling on the international stage. “Male photographers are unable to enter many parts of homes in Iraq, but women photographers are permitted to do so,” she notes. “If we have more working women photographers in Iraq, we don’t just achieve greater gender equality within Iraq’s photography industry, we also gain greater equity in storytelling.”

And storytelling is at the core of everything IFP does. “Our discussions and the advice we exchange have been truly valuable,” Salam says. “Through the IFP workshop and exhibition, I was able to present my very first documentary project.” As the collective moves forward, armed with resources and female solidarity within a blooming industry, the women of IFP are shaping not only how Iraq is seen, but who gets to do the seeing.

@ifp_iq_

“It’s important for us as Tunisian photographers, and not only for the Tunisian scene, to approach photo books from our own perspective”

Conceived as a bridge to Jaou Tunis, the biennale of image and moving image, Bound Narratives, co-curated with Iraqi photographer Abdul Hadi, aims to strengthen the Tunisian cultural scene through innovative curatorial formats that centre the photo book and the image. The festival’s ambition, according to Ghorbel, was not only to showcase work but also to re-anchor the project in Tunisia – bringing the photo book medium closer to local audiences and practitioners.

“This was the main idea behind bringing Bound Narratives to Tunis – it’s a project from artists from the MENA region but it was mostly showcased in Western countries. It made a lot of sense for us to bring this project to North Africa and create a one-of-kind event in the region,” says Ghorbel. “We have a lot of projects in the region about photography, about books and the arts, but not about photo books specifically.”

Initially envisioned as a small reading room, the project expanded into a large-scale exhibition featuring over 30 artists from across the Middle East, North Africa, and beyond – including Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Palestine, Turkey, and Lebanon. The show was organised around three curatorial threads: Longing and Belonging, Upheaval, and Reimagining Histories, exploring how artists use the photo book as a medium for counter-narratives, memory, and reclamation.

One of the festival’s most powerful undertones is its decolonial spirit – rethinking how visual narratives from the MENA region are produced, circulated, and historicised. As Ghorbel explains, for many Tunisian artists, exposure to photobooks has long been mediated through Western references and institutions. Bound Narratives challenged that by offering a platform built from within the region, featuring creators whose perspectives are often underrepresented in global publishing circuits.

“It’s important for us as Tunisian photographers, and not only for the Tunisian scene, to approach photo books from our own perspective. Here, we have mostly Western references and we don’t know what’s happening in the region. With this project, we discover the richness of projects that are happening that we didn’t have access to,” Ghorbel continues.

Panels such as “Independent Publishing in the Region,” moderated by Mohamed Somji of Gulf Photo Plus, created space for reflection on the infrastructures of artistic production. Participants included Tunisian voices such as Zied Ben Romdhane, Souheila Ghorbel, and Moez Akkari, founder of Bao Books, a new independent bookstore in Tunis.

These discussions culminated in the creation of a regional database of creators and publishing resources – an initiative toward sustainable collaboration and knowledge exchange.

Parallel to the exhibition, the festival hosted numerous workshops, concerts, and community programs. Egyptian photographer Heba Khalifa presented her work virtually, while Maen Hammad led a skate zine-making session with Tunis’s skating community – part of his ongoing Landing project linking youth collectives from Palestine to Colombia and the US. Landing is the inaugural publication of Saade’s publishing house, Huwawa, launched this year which expands his efforts to practice disruptive publishing focused on artists and local economies in the region. 

A key component of the ongoing festival is the Photobook-Making Lab, led by Tamara Abdul Hadi, Roï Saade, and Zied Ben Romdhane, in which ten Tunisian photographers are developing photobook dummies under mentorship. This lab reflects the festival’s commitment to capacity-building and to cultivating a self-sustaining photobook culture in Tunisia.

For Ghorbel, Bound Narratives represents a turning point: “Just by having only photobooks from the region is an achievement itself.” The exhibition revealed the multiplicity of approaches to bookmaking emerging from the Arab world – works that blend intimacy and politics, history and materiality.

Bound Narratives will continue its journey through a forthcoming presentation at Ibraaz, the newly relaunched London-based initiative by Lina Lazaar and the Kamel Lazaar Foundation. The aim is to engage with the London art scene and its diasporic communities, and to create new synergies between the foundation’s regional and international platforms.

Bound Narratives runs until 15 November at B7L9, Tunis. The exhibition A Photobook World closed its doors at B7L9 Art Centre on November 2. However, the Bound Narratives festival is still ongoing at Le 32bis through the Photobook-Making Lab.

“It’s this whole subculture where boys meticulously colour-coordinate a tracksuit with their trainers, then top it off with a fresh trim”

The idea took root during conversations with her brother about the often- overlooked grooming rituals of Moroccan youth. “We’d talk about how crazy the hairstyles were – but no one really documents them,” she says. “It’s this whole subculture where boys meticulously colour-coordinate a tracksuit with their trainers, then top it off with a fresh trim. It’s all curated.”

As Abelque continued her research, the project deepened in complexity. Hairstyles, she realised, reflect political realities. “There’s this stereotype that these boys are just idling all day,” she says. “But they’re creating joy and purpose for themselves. A footballer debuts a new style and suddenly everyone’s talking about it, running to the barber to get the same look.”

In a country where youth employment is scarce and public recreational spaces are limited, the barbershop emerges as a vital hub. “Hair and beauty become a means of self-expression,” Abelque says. “But it’s also a social ritual – a way to find identity and belonging among young men.” Abelque shoots in the barbershops too, and the images festooning their walls provide a joyfully chaotic foil for the quieter portraits taken against a clean space. Abelque sees the barbershop as a boy’s bedroom in public, walls covered in football posters, streetwear brand logos and mirror selfies. “It’s where their interests live.”

Abelque is particularly drawn to aesthetic contradictions. “To see an Arab man walking around with a massive mohawk – that image is so layered,” she reflects. But she adds that their pride is also palpable. She was overwhelmed by how excited the boys were to have their portrait made, the images perhaps validating the care taken over their appearance, and further encouraging them to attract a healthy attention. “When I asked to take their photo, they’d light up,” she says. “They’d pull out pictures of their best fits, their favourite cuts. They’re proud of how they present themselves.”

@zeeeeeea

“If we can’t see where we’re from, maybe we can invent a homeland”

That informal education helped the brothers forge a style unburdened by documentary conventions. “Because we didn’t go to photo school, we didn’t get too obsessed with reportage or journalistic truth,” says Jibril. “Our lens was always through cinema, where fiction is welcome. We were more interested in creating worlds that invite imagination.”

Their earliest experiments in Los Angeles were inspired by the analog revival of the early 2010s. After discovering medium-format film on Tumblr, they met British photographer Tyrone Lebon at a Q&A, a pivotal encounter that introduced them to darkroom printing and led to their first editorial work for i-D Magazine. “We sent him our images, and he gave us feedback,” Jibril recalls. “Eventually, he introduced us to the team at i-D, and we got our first commissions, profiles on Rejjie Snow and Keith Ape.”

As their editorial work developed, the brothers began reflecting on how their itinerant upbringing shaped their outlook. “Being exposed to so many cultures has been a gift,” says Jibril. “When you’ve actually seen the world, your vocabulary for images widens. What we used to see as displacement, we now see as a tool for maturation.”

In 2017, revisiting their family photos from the Caribbean proved transformative. “We realised that what moved us wasn’t just other people’s aesthetics,” says Jibril, “but the warmth and sunlight we grew up around. We decided to use those techniques to tell stories about the Caribbean, about tropical identity. That’s when we stopped imitating and started defining our own voice.”

Movement has defined the Durimel blueprint and seems to continue to colour their visual worlds. Their subsequent move to Paris expanded their exploration of occidental design and African diasporas. “We were struck by the African presence in Paris,” says Jibril. “At first we thought we’d photograph the diaspora there, but after speaking to people we decided to go directly to Africa.” Travelling to Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal deepened their ongoing book project, Quiet as the Country (a working title), a long-term body of work that weaves portraiture, landscape, and costume into a fictional yet emotionally grounded world.

“We wanted to make a photo book based on a fictitious tropical republic,” Jibril explains. “If we can’t see where we’re from, maybe we can invent a homeland. Through that make-believe, we’ve learned a lot about ourselves.”

The project, which has been in progress for nearly nine years, began partly out of frustration with the commercial fashion system. “Fashion can be too hierarchical and too fast,” says Jibril. “It was limiting. The book became a cry for autonomy – a way to rediscover creativity without deadlines.”

The brothers now work with small crews, relying on natural light and minimal styling. “We love bare makeup and simple materials.  Coconut oil, sunlight, the park at sunrise,” says Jibril. “We like to keep things light: a bag of clothes, a reflector, and our cameras. It’s about letting the image feel like it’s already happening.” That simplicity mirrors their broader creative philosophy: “We try not to over-manipulate,” says Jibril. “We want the photos to feel natural, effortless.”

Their latest project, Lundambuyu’s Mobility Program features Habiba Hopson as ‘Lundambuyu,’ a fictitious mobility trainer, it’s an ode to the able body. Here, the goal is beauty in the pursuit of dignifying our everyday lives, Durimel printed a limited run of 500 posters from the series that was shared for free at Climax Books in New York City, the first public reception of their work, on 27 October. 

Nature itself has become an essential part of their visual and spiritual vocabulary. “We look at nature as the idea of God,” Jibril reflects. “The best art feels like God made it. When you look at a tree or stones in a river, there’s effortlessness. That’s what we try to achieve – something that feels organic, like it already existed.”

Recently, they have been experimenting with still lifes of natural concretions — stones that form without human intervention. They realised they were always drawn to the images that felt untouched. Jibril says, “that’s when it clicked. Even in our portraiture, we’re searching for that same natural expression.”

Despite their shared vision, collaboration remains a careful balance. As one can imagine, working with family can’t be a straightforward feat. “Working together is a social journey,” says Jalan. The brothers have had to learn how to communicate better, but admit “it’s something we’re still figuring out,”, says Jalan. Their process now gives each twin autonomy within their shared practice. “If one of us has an idea, that person leads the shoot,” Jalan explains. “The other assists completely. It’s about surrendering power so ideas can flow.”

Both brothers are also cultivating individual practices: Jibril has returned to drawing and draftsmanship, while Jalan is teaching himself music and songwriting. “Having our own outlets has been liberating,” says Jibril. “It makes the collaboration healthier.”

Now based in New York, they are continuing work on Quiet as the Country while seeking the right publishing and gallery partners, aiming tentatively for a 2026 release. “We don’t know exactly when,” Jibril admits. “But what the project has done for us – for our relationship, and for how we understand image-making – has already been enough.”

At the centre of their work is a commitment to transformation – a belief that art is not only about making something beautiful but also about becoming through the process. “Art is metamorphosis,” says Jibril. “Each project teaches us who we are. We just want to make something beautiful that makes people feel something.”

durimel.co

“Bring a print back to people. It’s the best way to open doors”

The images themselves resist easy reading. Miksys’ portraits, often taken with a flash in dim, smoke-thick interiors, show people posing with an intensity that feels both performative and private. “At first, I thought of posing as unnatural,” he admits. “But I realised those pictures were telling me a lot. They’re proud. They’re saying: this is who I am.”

The images are of a proud culture. Resisting patronisation, Miksys allows the community the space to represent themselves how they choose, such as the boxer Spartacus, with his fists up in a loose position, white vest and black bowler hat. “He’s from southern Lithuania and I photographed him in 2006 just before I published my first edition and then in 2019 I went and found him and photographed him again for the second edition.” 

Many images are also of domestic spaces and cultural artifacts, such as radios, wallpaper patterns or photo frames. Here unfurls an archive of a Soviet history that was falling apart around the Roma community. Fogged windows, plastic flowers, a coffee cup on a ledge, lace curtains bright with daylight. “Maybe they seem simple,” Miksys says, “but they have a lot of information about Soviet history, about how things look and feel here. The fog, the damp. It’s all part of it.” In one photograph, a single window glows with the warmth of a lived-in room. The image, he notes, was taken in Taboras, in a house that no longer exists. “People thought that neighbourhood was just a horrible place. But when you were inside, they’d invite you for coffee. They became my new community.”

The heart of BAXT lies in Taboras, a long-standing Roma settlement in Vilnius that once housed some 500 people. Over years of visits, Miksys watched the neighbourhood’s houses be torn down one by one. “The city was slowly demolishing it,” he explains. “Some of the homes just burned. I realised I had to continue documenting it, to have something, at least, as a record of what happened.” The last house was destroyed in 2020.

To preserve what could not be saved, Miksys began salvaging materials from the ruins – charred wooden beams, fragments of doors, children’s toys – and incorporating them into sculptural installations. “I had a solo exhibition at MO Museum in Vilnius,” he says. “We built these twelve doors with photographs on both sides, about what home means and what its destruction means.” The installations have since appeared in community spaces too, including a disused synagogue in Žagarė, the small town on the Latvian border where Miksys now lives.

This move from photography into sculpture reflects how BAXT has expanded in scope and intention. “I still feel there is a lot of the erasure of Roma culture and a limiting discussion about it especially with state institutions. I found that very frustrating and I felt I really had to make this document for the history books, at least to have a record of what happened.”

“With all my connections with the Roma community, we do everything together,” he says. “At the exhibitions, the openings, the closing parties, bands are playing, people are talking about everything. It’s important that they have that space.”

Representation – how and by whom it is made – has always been central to BAXT. In the beginning, Miksys spoke no Lithuanian, Russian, or Romani. Communication was mostly “sign language,” he laughs, or photographs themselves. “Larry Clark once told us, at school: photograph once, then bring a print back to people. It’s the best way to open doors.” The gesture proved crucial. “The Roma are a very oral culture,” Miksys explains. “Family history often survives only through photographs. So when I gave them pictures, they used them – put them in their homes, transformed them. Sometimes they’d even tear their page out of my book and hang it on the wall.”

Designed anew by Claudia Küssel in Düsseldorf, the book now adopts a vertical format and introduces unpublished photographs alongside essays and interviews with members of the Roma community. Its publication coincides with upcoming events, including one at The Photographers’ Gallery in London.

The BAXT book launch will take place at the Photography’s Gallery on 06 November, 6:30 – 8:00. A talk will be followed by a book signing in the Bookshop, with copies of BAXT and a limited number of rare, out-of-print copies of DISKO available. 

The show is gargantuan; not only the space itself (a disused aerospace hanger), but the show takes 192 minutes, or around three hours, to view in total, with each slideshow lasting between 15 and 42 minutes – and with heavy viewing material, one needs to be committed to this journey. Though the work can be overwhelming when viewed consecutively, the space is cleverly designed so that viewers can find peaceful, empty spaces between slideshow structures in the main ‘foyer’ space. 

Before any of the slideshows, we walk through the ‘prelude’ in the Navate space: a soundscape designed by experimental sound art collective Soundwalk Collective, conceived in close collaboration with Goldin, named Bleeding (2025). The ambient work is moving and inviting, despite its lightness, and transports us deep into Goldin’s psyche. 

The duo, made up of artist and composer Stephan Crasneanscki and composer Simone Merli, have collaborated with Goldin since 2015, creating soundtracks and immersive soundscapes for projects including All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022), winner of the Golden Lion at Venice, and The Women’s March, 1789 (2019) at Versailles. Their new commissioned composition, Bleeding (2025), draws on ambient recordings gathered from earlier iterations of This Will Not End Well in Stockholm, Amsterdam, and Berlin, weaving them into an atmosphere that extends Goldin’s images into sound.

The slideshow format is an homage to Goldin’s entry into photography and entire artistic practice: in 1973, whilst in Provincetown – a queer community on the American East Coast, near Boston – on sabbatical from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, she had no access to a darkroom in order to print her works, so she began presenting them as slides. This soon mushroomed into her now relied upon format. 

Present at the opening, Goldin made it clear where she wanted our eyes to be looking as she presented ‘Gaza’, a short film made up of collected footage from journalists and civilians on the ground in Gaza, Palestine. Though this is work that is reserved as a footnote, or aggressively censored, by the institutions Goldin works with, she said, at the opening: “I could talk about elegant things, like this work. But really, [Gaza] is where my mind has been for the past two years.” 

Her vocality and directness is unsurprising in this context (especially for anyone who attended her Kering Award acceptance speech in Recontres d’Arles 2025): Goldin has been using her art as activism since she began making images. Her most important slideshows such as The Ballad and shows such as Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing, 1989, New York City, documented not only the AIDS crisis that decimated Goldin’s community of friends and art workers, but the political inaction towards the health crisis at the time. Her later work on the American opioid crisis prompted her to form the direct action group P.A.I.N (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) and followed the Sacklers – the family linked to the devastating opioid crisis – into bankruptcy court, and successfully removing their name from Museum walls, such as the Met. In 2019 Goldin staged a viral protest in the Guggenheim, dropping thousands of fake prescriptions into the museum’s atrium, protesting the institution’s acceptance of donations from the Sackler family. 

This Will Not End Well was first conceived alongside Fredrik Liew, chief curator at Moderna Museet, Stockholm, where it debuted in 2022. It then travelled to the Stedelijk in Amsterdam (2023) and the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin (2024). After Milan, it will travel to Paris in 2026 at Grand Palais. The Italian iteration features two additional works, You Never Did Anything Wrong (2024) and Stendhal Syndrome (both reedited in 2025), displayed in a museum context for the first time in Europe (Stendhal Syndrome received displays at Gagosian in New York, including framed works, before playing at Recontres d’Arles this year). 

In Milan, Sisters, Saints and Sibyls (2004 – 2022) occupies the Cubo, a vast space whose 20-metre height recalls the architecture of La Chapelle de la Salpêtrière in Paris, where the work was first shown in 2004. At Pirelli HangarBicocca, the installation is restaged in a form true to the original, complete with two structures depicting Goldin’s younger sister in a bed, and a male figure on the other side of the room, visible from an elevated platform that invites viewers to experience its full vertical intensity. It is part of the show’s effort of using personal narratives to break walls between artist and audience, translating universal emotions, and the idea that the past is always shaping our present. 

This Will Not End Well is on at Pirelli HangarBicocca until 15 February 2026