Ain Tezine, Kabylia, Algeria, 1960. Marc Garanger
“This was war and they were forced to be photographed, so there was no communication. This had to happen. I had to take the picture, and they had no choice in being photographed…Their only way of protesting was through their look…They were firing at me with their eyes.”
Following military orders, he photographed women and men who were forcibly displaced from their villages to so-called camps de regroupement (regroupment camps) by the French army. Displacement formed a military strategy intended to disrupt the support networks between villagers and anti-colonial fighters. The photographs taken by Garanger were included with the newly issued identity cards that each individual had to carry with them in the camps. Since most men had left their villages to join the anti-colonial struggle, the overwhelming majority of these photographs are of women.
