This is a photo series between 2009 and 2014 from her personal archives. Bénitah was trying to create a dream album where she looks at the idea of the ideal family looking at the themes of memory and loss. The stitches ressemble the conflict, drama and pain of family history that is absent from the images.
The photobook has a mix of black and white images and colour images. Carolle Bénitah worked into the images with stitching which adds texture but not physically because it is her images printed in the book. The book it self is roughly A4 and the images range in size and orientation. The book is a hardcover and has been binded using perfect binding which is when the binding is hidden by the cover using glue and stitching. The cover is made of card and has a single graphic image that wraps around the book and the title of the book is embossed on the front. The title is literal as it is her family’s’ photo souvenirs.
Photos from Photos Souvenirs:
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Narrative: what is the story/ subject-matter. How is it told?
The story seems to be about her family and is told by using old images from her own families’ archive and she has manipulated them by sewing into them, adding a new narrative or adding to the current story/memory told in the image.
Design and layout: image size on pages/ single page, double-spread/ images/ grid, fold- outs/ inserts.
Throughout the book most images are single page images and often there is one image on one page then a blank page next to it. Some pages consist of a double page spread image that has been sliced in half horizontally taking up half the double page or a spilt in colour, for example white at the top and red at the bottom.
Editing and sequencing: selection of images/ juxtaposition of photographs/ editing process.
The images follow a journey of her life from daughter to wife to mother, telling the story of Carolle Bénitah.
Images and text: are they linked? Introduction/ essay/ statement by artists or others. Use of captions (if any.)
There is no introduction before the images start in the book. Majority of the images in the photobook do not have any texts linked to them but there is a couple which have texts that Carolle Bénitah embroidered into the images (shown below).
At the end of the book there is one final image which consists of a picture of two frames one with her and her son and the other being her parents with the text, “a mon fils” and “a mes parents” which translates to for my son and for my parents which tells us the book is dedicated to them.
The statement at the end of the book is a summary of what Benitah wanted to portray in the photobook.
About – “Photos Souvenirs”
Carolle Bénitah
https://www.carolle-benitah.com/
Carolle Bénitah was born in Casablanca, she now lives and works in Marseille. Bénitah was a fashion designer before becoming a photographer in 2001, she incorporates sewing and beading into her photography. She often explores the themes of memory, family, desire, loss, mourning and time. in her work.
“I started photography when the fragile dimension of life imposed itself on me and functioned as an existential crutch. Faced with a reality difficult to apprehend”
-Carolle Bénitah
The Photobook Photos Souvenirs is based on her memories of her Moroccan childhood, reinterpreting her own history as a daughter, wife and mother by manipulating images from her own personal archives using embroidery to create an album. She uses the slow and precise process of embroidery as a metaphor of time passing by, and to create designs that break the happiness in the images and deconstruct the myth of an ideal family.
“To embroider my photograph, I make holes in the paper. With each stitch, I stick the needle through the paper. Each hole is a putting to death of my demons. It is like an exorcism. I stab the paper until I don’t hurt anymore.”
-Carolle Bénitah