Leila Alaoui

Leila Alaoui was a French-Moroccan photographer and video artist, born in 1982. Much of her work was about migration, identity and belonging: she filmed and photographed migrants trying to reach Europe, displaced Syrians in Lebanon, and people living between countries.

Her best-known series, Les Marocains, was made between 2010 and 2014 with a mobile studio she took to towns, villages and markets across Morocco; it was partly inspired by Robert Frank's The Americans. Against a plain black background she photographed people in their own clothes and jewellery, then printed them life-size: a response to the exotic, orientalist images of Morocco made by Western photographers, and a portrait of the country's diversity in its own terms.

How to look at Les Marocains: begin with the scale. At life size the sitters meet you at eye level, and the plain black ground removes the setting that orientalist photographs relied on, so the clothes, the jewellery and the gaze carry everything. Then notice how much each sitter's expression seems to be their own choice. That reading is this site's own.

The series was shown at the Musée Yves Saint Laurent in Marrakech from 30 September 2018 to 5 February 2019, with thirty portraits, several for the first time, organised by the Fondation Jardin Majorelle with the Fondation Leila Alaoui and curated by Guillaume de Sardes. It was shown at Casa Árabe in Madrid from 7 June to 22 September 2019 as part of the PHotoEspaña festival. Ask the museum or the foundation what is on view now.

In January 2016 she was in Ouagadougou to photograph women's rights for Amnesty International. On 15 January gunmen attacked a café and hotel in the city; Alaoui was badly wounded and died three days later, aged 33. A foundation in her name preserves her work. See also Hassan Hajjaj, Yto Barrada, our lists of Moroccan photographers and African photographers.