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Background information
French Photographer Alexis CORDESSE spent three years in France, Germany and Turkey collecting personal images of men and women who have fled Syria. In Arabic, talashi means erosion, disappearance, fragmentation. These photographs taken in exile, in a suitcase, on a mobile phone, bear witness to the memory of uprooted lives. Fleeing Syria with one's personal images is a risk: in case of arrest, the photographs are seized, analysed. The people in them become suspect for the regime. In such a context, photography becomes dangerous. The war is perceived differently, through the prism of the exile's word and the memory of the images he has chosen to keep. Photography as a tangible trace is put in tension: what does it tell us about the experience, what does it reveal about each person?
Content
In the course of his encounters, for this photo volume, 'Talashi' Alexis CORDESSE has written the stories of these vernacular photographs and of those who have entrusted them to him. At the crossroads of intimacy and history, Talashi speaks of the circulation of images through the experience of exile. This narrative is set in the off-field of newsreel images." (© Barral, 2021)