Photos Souvenirs- Carolle Bénitah

Photos Souvenirs is an exploration of Bénitah’s memories from her childhood in Morocco and was worked on between 2009 and 2014. This series is made up of old family achieves, which she manipulates by threading beads and embroidering designs relating to her feelings towards each photographic memories. She calls the photos she finds “excavations”, and she starts by transposing them onto new paper. She mostly uses red thread and beads, but some of her pieces also include gold and black coloured material. They add a shine to her photos, and each design holds significance. She sometimes even manipulates the photos in a more destructive way, cutting out individuals and placing them elsewhere.

Growing up in a traditional Moroccan household, Bénitah was expected to do many typically- feminine tasks. The embroidery she adds to the achieves hold a lot of significance, portraying how she was taught to sew as a girl, and was expected to continue the activity for her entire life. She uses this to portray her distaste of being a good girl, a good wife and a loving mother. Embroidery in itself is a calm activity, however, Bénitah uses it to show her anger and other strong emotions. I think she made it to deal with her past but also to show others how not every picture is truthful.

The Design

The book is around the size of an A4 (21cm x 24cm), with thick coloured paper. The start and end pages of the book are yellow black and red, however the rest of the pages are white, the only colour being the pictures. The outside of the book is a hardcover and shows a snapshot of Benitah’s past with red glitter appearing to slide down the page. It has 112 pages and 53 photos featured inside. The title is quite literal and relevant to her project, Photos Souvenirs indicating quite literally what the photos inside feature. The is one photo per page, in different positions around the two pages, some being directly printed across both pages. There is not much writing in the book except at the end, the photos telling the entire story of her life. The photos are all in chronological order, from when she was very young to her and her family as adults/ elders. Most of the pictures are embroidered with red, gold or black thread (some also including other media), the designs adding a new meaning to each photograph. The photos don’t have captions, however a glossary at the back provides the viewer with the name of each photo both in English and French. A short statement, written by Benitah in English and French, is on one of the last pages of the photobook, printed in white on a black page. It gives a short insight on the production of the book, and her thoughts behind it. There are 250 copies of the special edition that includes 6 embroidered prints.