Camera: Olympus OM-10, 50 mm.
Film: Agfa APX 100 ASA.
Creation date: March 2020.
Location: La marsa, La goulette, Tunis, Tunisia.
There are things we believe to be eternal, always present, until the day they disappear. The sea, for me, seemed to be one of those certainties. Sometimes we see it as a familiar backdrop, an infinite space. Yet, it only takes stepping away from it to understand how much it is a part of us and to discover its many meanings.
Growing up in Tunisia, the sea always seemed omnipresent. But it is also the witness to much darker stories. We grow up with phrases like “كلاه البحر” – “the sea devoured him” –, words that speak of pain and crushed hope. The news keeps coming: “غرق قارب يقل مهاجرين غير نظاميين” (the sinking of a boat carrying migrants), “ارتفاع عدد الوفيات قبالة السواحل” (the rise in deaths off the coast). These stories have become almost ordinary, but their weight has never lightened.
For so many people, the sea is a promise. It is the ultimate chance, the passage to a better life. But it is also a brutal border, where dreams crash and lives are lost. And while these tragedies unfold, others watch the horizon from their balconies, indifferent to these dramas that happen so close to them.
The sea is a complex symbol, full of dreams and contradictions. In some places, it represents privilege and comfort: those who live near it contemplate it every day, drinking their coffee while looking at it, as if it belongs to them, as if it were just a backdrop part of their home. But for many others, it remains a distant line, an unreachable horizon, an inaccessible hope.
When I read Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that “everyone has the right to move freely and leave any country, including their own”, I wonder for whom these rights were written. Not for those young people facing the waves with dreams in their eyes, nor for those mothers who mourn their lost children. These words, meant to embody universal justice, seem foreign to those for whom the sea is an insurmountable barrier.
With all these heavy meanings and injustices, the sea remains much more than just a place of pain. It can also be a refuge, a space where one can escape, even if only for a moment, from the pressures of the world, where one can forget the injustices and boundaries imposed upon us. Even scarred by pollution, factories, and walls, it continues to offer moments of escape, serenity, and sometimes even hope.
Through my photographic project, I seek to capture this sea that belongs to us all, whether we touch it with our gaze or dream of it from afar. It carries our stories, our struggles, and our hopes. One day, perhaps, it will cease to be a place of separation and will become a space of communion. Then, we will be able to look at it simply for what it is: an endless, beautiful, and free expanse.
This series was exhibited in 2021 in Cairo, Egypt, as part of Grain, the first exhibition devoted to analog photography at the Cairo Photo Week festival organized by Photopia.
A photo from this series was chosen by the festival team to be the poster for the exhibition.
Aya Chriki 