Rue Belouizdad, Alger

I was born in Algeria in december 1986. I lived there until I was seven. Because of the civil war, my parents and I moved to France. The following years, we came back there for the holidays, until I was 10. Then my parents stopped bringing me with them. For a long time, memories came back to me like old dreams. Memories of Boumerdes, the city of my childhood, and the « Champ Manoeuvre » district, in Alger. However, it took some time for the mental process to turn into into a geographical path. In october 2014, I went back to Algeria for the first time after 17 years away. In Alger, I stay « rue Belouizdad », in a popular district, with my aunts, H. & N. Since the death of their sister, two years before, they moved in her flat and finally never leaved it. B. is also here, she was the nurse of my aunt who passed away, and she also stayed in the flat. This photographic series takes place in this little appartment that we share by four women. H. and N. don't work anymore, they spend a lot of time at home, sleeping a lot, they look as tired as the country. While H. and N. are smoking, B. is praying, and I'm connecting back back with my memories, in this world that appears to me strange and familiar at the same time. I'm trying to create images through the filter of my mental pictures. After this 17 years absence, I'm trying to deal with what can't be forgotten anymore.