“He quickly stood out from the other boys. He was very comfortable in front of the lens and posed easily. His desire to be in the light was palpable,” recounts the French photographer Julie Joubert of her first meeting with the protagonist of MIDO—a young man called Ahmed. She first encountered him at a social reintegration center for young people in Paris. Then, a few years later when they reconnected via social media, she decided to follow him through the ups and downs he was facing at the time. She recalls, “he told me about his chaotic life path and his dream of becoming a model. In the beginning, I had no idea where it would lead. I was guided by the certainty that I had to do a project with this boy, because of his charisma and his strong character.”
They began by making portraits in a more staged, traditional style but soon the project developed in many directions. Using a DSLR, these images were at times pictorial or sharp, transporting Ahmed to what Joubert calls a “dreamlike dimension.” Lit in green and pink, he looks otherworldly in one photograph. In another, he vamps up for the camera, showing off red lipstick. As they continued and trust was built, he began to take her with him as he wandered the city. She used a disposable camera for these nights. “The harshness of the flash, the lack of sharpness and the texture of the image made it possible for flaws and failures to appear,” she explains.
In response to the changing circumstances of Ahmed’s life, Joubert switched her image-making process multiple times. Passport photos, cell phone images, and disposable cameras all play a part in recording Ahmed’s story. We see the many faces of Ahmed—in selfies, hanging out with friends, posing, in official documentation, vulnerable. The result is a series that feels in sync with its subject as much as with its time and environment.
Smoking a cigarette on a terrace, Ahmed looks glamorous, languorous in the dramatic evening light. The image feels cinematic and thus the next image delivers a shock; a grainy mugshot, awkwardly cropped as Ahmed’s world abruptly changes. As time went on, the instability of his life grew. He was threatened with deportation and then incarcerated at the La Santé prison in Paris. The project could have ended there, yet they remained in touch.
Joubert describes the images from this time as “on-the-fly photographs that I took in the visiting room of the detention center, the images that Ahmed sent me from his prison cell, the pixelated images of an old mobile phone emerged as the means of recreating this context. The fragility of the low-definition images coincided with his gradual loss of freedom.”
In the falling apart pixels of a mobile phone, we see the claustrophobic confines of the prison. Months later Joubert photographed Ahmed again, lanky and loose, subsumed in the spray of a fountain, wreathed in bright light. Then he reappears embracing someone, a line of photomaton pictures showing his before and after haircuts. Throughout the portraits we see him changing, experimenting, and growing into himself. She notes that throughout their time making the photographs,“what sustained Ahmed was his ability to hold onto his dreams.”
In her choice of a responsive form of image making, Joubert has allowed photography to do what it does best; capture in glimpses, both big and small, all the fantasies, quiet moments, and harsh realities that make up a life.
This series was a top winner in the LensCulture Portrait Awards 2023. Discover all of the winners and finalists.