Photographs at M Suite Hotel

A series of my film photos now grace the walls at the M Suite Hotel, a chic property that opened this month in Dar El Beïda, on the eastern outskirts of Algiers.

To stand apart from the depressingly sterile hotels sprouting up across the capital's suburbs, the M Suite owner chose to highlight Algeria's diverse beauty as the hotel's core concept, selecting different cities and regions as themes for the hotel's 52 rooms. It's a concept I was—no surprise here—eager to contribute to.

For nearly a year, I've been working closely with the hotel's artistic team (from Al Marhoon Gallery) to select and prepare works, ultimately printing and framing several dozen that now hang in rooms celebrating the architectural, natural, and cultural splendor of places like Biskra, Taghit, Algiers, Oran, Constantine, Adrar, and more.

Best of all, my photos stand alongside works from great homegrown photographers, as well as pieces by eminent modern Algerian artists like Mohamed Belaid, Rachid Koraichi, Hamza Bounoua, El Moustache, and others. These works complement built-in architectural accents—from a multi-story moucharabieh screen to each room's unique combination of vivid tiles and and elegant wall inlays—that give the hotel's modern aesthetic an unmistakably local flair.

Featured in "Veiled, Unveiled!" Exhibit

A photo I took early in my Algeria days is featured in an exhibit opening today at the Weltmuseum Wien, the ethnographic museum in Vienna, Austria.

The exhibition, entitled "Veiled, Unveiled!" (such enthusiasm!) features works on the female headscarf ("just a piece of cloth but laden with countless facets of meaning") from its earliest origins to Jewish and Christian traditions to Islam and its association with recent waves of immigration to Austria and the wider EU.

My contribution, a print from one of my early Rolleicord film photos, dates back to a March 2014 cultural event organized by Algerian artist Souad Douibi's Belaredj collective. There, at Souad's direction, young women donned the traditional Algerian haïk—a relic of their grandmothers' era that has nearly disappeared from the streets of Algiers today—and reenacted Da Vinci's "The Last Supper" before parading through downtown. (I'm honored that my photo will appear in the exhibit alongside one by the talented Francis Sistiague, who invited me to that first Belaredj event.)

To see my photo and all the other works, visit the Weltmuseum! The exhibit runs from today through February 26, 2019. Location, hours, and other information are available here.