Pictures
#black and white
#Skander Khif
#bushes
#Tunisia
All photographs © Skander Khif, shared with permission
Skander Khif was born in Tunis and first realized concerning the artwork of pictures throughout a college undertaking. However his research finally took him down an engineering path earlier than he rediscovered his love for the medium and started specializing in its energy to seize the intricacies and variety of human relationships, communities, and locations around the globe. Now based mostly in Munich, he paperwork life in public areas to inform intimate visible tales.
For the previous two years, Khif has been pursuing a private undertaking revolving across the atmosphere and the local weather disaster. His focuses his lens on individuals and what he describes as “their spirituality and their ways of living,” testaments to the connection between place, time, and custom. Whereas he was touring by means of Tunisia, he stopped in a small fishing village close to Sidi Mechreg, a windswept place that sits very near Africa’s northernmost level.
“I have always been fascinated by special trees,” Khif tells Colossal, “particularly olive trees, due to their cultural and historical significance in places like Tunisia.” Within the arid areas the place they develop, the bushes—and the proverbial olive department—have lengthy been symbolic of peace, friendship, and energy. “I had heard about the existence of such a tree in this region and went searching for it without knowing what I would find,” Khif says. “That’s when I met 3am El Ayechi and his grandson under the tree.”
Khif’s collection, The Tree of Life, paperwork a typical afternoon for 3am El Ayechi—the 3am nickname interprets from Arabic to an endearing time period for “uncle”—who typically visits what locals discuss with as “the wind tree” due to its stalwart capacity to resist robust, salty winds. Khif spent three hours with Ayechi within the morning, visited by buddies and relations, listening to tales about his household, the area, and the tree, which he known as “Om Ezitouna.”
After Ayechi went for prayer, lunch, and siesta, he returned to his spot beneath the tree, the place the pair spent an additional three hours collectively. Ayechi described witnessing and taking part within the Bizerte battle, a three-day disaster between Tunisian and French forces in 1961 shortly after Tunisia gained independence from France—within the very spot they sat.
“Encounters like this are precisely why I became a photographer—meeting beautiful souls, hearing their stories, and making friends,” Khif says. “I often find myself invited into people’s homes and lives, especially in the south and the countryside. It’s important to forget the purpose or mission while photographing and to enjoy the people, their stories, and the moment.”
Discover extra of the artist’s work on Behance, Instagram, and his web site.
#black and white
#Skander Khif
#bushes
#Tunisia
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