An "other" perspective of Tunisia

November 17, 2005

I may have been an expatriate living and working in Tunisia in the spring of 2003, but to my friends and students there I was, in perspective, exiled away to Harvard when I left. I was an English teacher in the seaside town of Sousse for six months before coming to the AM program at CMES, and while six months may be inadequate to develop a sense of belonging to a place, it was for me more than sufficient time to discover some ‘other’ perspectives of my own.

The ‘other’ perspective is, not to put it too simply, exactly what I have in mind when I click the shutter. When we photograph we are creating objects – facts and records and documents – but we are not creating memories. It is undeniable that when we look at a photograph we stir our memory; a phenomenon usually driven by the viewer’s relationship to the content and context of what has been captured by the physical and chemical process of photography. Much like the argument that as living beings we are a contradiction to history, yet still ironically a part of it, so the photograph is a corollary perspective of memory.

This conscious denial of the image as memory is personified by my preference for the black and white medium, as well as in my desire to entreat perspectives of reality within the frame of the photograph that aren’t starkly recognizable when the camera is not extended off the edge of my face. When the darkroom business is finished, what I’m hoping to realize is a certain ‘other’ perspective that will exert in me a sensation that Barthes has aptly described as advenience; the adventuresome adding of a new perspective to the whole.1

That said, I also won’t deny the context of the place itself in my photography, and here memory is well put to use. I found Tunisians to be very inviting and I generously partook of their hospitality while living and teaching in Sousse and traveling to great extent around the whole of the country. The Levantine Arabic dialect I had worked on for more than two years needed a swift adjustment in North Africa, as did my tolerance for spicy peppered pastes and coaches bursting with European sunlovers. Without the time to describe it in more depth here, I will simply conclude that Tunisia’s rich history, captivating architecture and spirited inhabitants made the experience a great one for me. I hope the captions below will attest to that; the images themselves are of an ‘other’ perspective.

1. Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (New York, 1981), see chapter 7.

mud brick

In the oasis villages like Nefta, isolated on the desert frontier until the mid-twentieth century,
architectural design has made the most of the mud brick. Geometric patterns dominate rather
than more conventional frills.

Archway

Archway in the courtyard of the Great Mosque of Sousse,
built in the 9th century by the Aghlabid emir Abu Abbas Muhammad.


French-designed cathedral

The 19th century French-designed Cathedral of Saint Louis, situated amongst
the excavations of Carthage and built atop the site of a Crusader-era church.


Mausoleum in Monastir

An example of contemporary Tunisian flair: the plaza of the Habib Bourghiba mausoleum in Monastir.


Handmade shawls

The surfaces of these handmade shawls are actually smooth, yet there is an illusion
of roughness created by the coarse color design and fading hues reminiscent of tye-dye.
They hang to dry in the oasis village of Mides, literally a stone’s throw from
Algeria in the eastern Atlas mountains.


Gated staircase

Gated staircase and entryway at the colossal amphitheatre of El Djem. In Punic and
Roman times known as Thysdrus, the city held the third largest amphitheatre
in the empire after those of Rome and Capua.


Door in Nefta

It's not hard to figure out why my eye – and lens – were drawn
to this door in the oasis village of Nefta. The architect (hypnotist?)
had magnetism in mind, yet all he had to work with were mud,
palm wood, and a few copper studs.


Colored tilework

The anomaly of richly colored tilework along the otherwise drab cream hues of the town
walls of Zaghouan betray the fountains of fresh spring water which still supply the town’s needs.
Two thousand years ago, the springs quenched the needs of Carthage, via a system of aqueducts, 100 km away.


Functional arch

The functional arch: in the labyrinthal interior of the Ribat of Monastir. The concentric
archways are mesmerizing, but light and shadow can be as easily friend as foe to the camera.


Oasis banana plant

Leaves from the oasis banana plant, which produces a small, stubby banana only tasty
when grossly overripe. In oases like this one in Tozeur, it's amazing what can thrive
in the shade of a few palm trees.


Atlas mountains

Life meets the barren Atlas mountains where natural springs feed vegetation in desert outports like Chebika.


City of Sfax

Time didn’t desert the city of Sfax, but it seems the Ministry
of Tourism did. Tunisia’s second largest metropolis is therefore the
premier locale for being a traveler, rather than a beach-mongrel.


Oases of Douz

If the desert can be said to have boundaries, then oases like Douz
are border towns. Palms trees stand tall between the salt flats
to the north and the sea of Sahara to the south.


Sidi Bou Said

In everybody’s favorite seaside town, Sidi Bou Said, hordes of tourists come for a flavor
of the Greek Isles spiced with a bit of south shore charm, like Henna on the beach.


Mud bricks

Mud bricks dry in the open sun in the Saharan oasis village of Nefta. The mud is drawn 
from the ground nearby the oasis springs, dried and finally fired in pit kilns with dead palm fronds.


Moon rises

A moon rises over the walls of the Grand Mosque in Sousse.


Woodworker

A woodworker in the medina of Sfax


Oasis irrigation

The rigid standards of oasis irrigation – maximizing the use of water
in the parched desert – were laid down centuries ago and based principally
on the physics of gravity. Today in isolated oasis villages like Chebika at the
southeastern rim of the Atlas mountains, water channels quench the date
palm groves using much of the same tried-and-tested methods.


Silhouetted arches

Silhouetted arches at the amphitheatre of El Djem.


Dusk descends

As dusk descends on the beach in Sousse, the throngs of visitors abandon the daytime shade to its neighbor, the sea.


Richard Alexander Johnson (AM '05) is a graduate of CMES's AM program in Middle Eastern Studies.