Description

Born and raised in Algeria, I spent 25 years there before beginning my exile in December 2018, shortly after graduating in medical sciences. This departure was guided by two main purposes: to help others through humanitarian and volunteer work, and to pursue my journey in visual arts.

My first destination was Poland, where I volunteered in a Catholic brotherhood’s sanatorium for people with neuropsychiatric conditions. As a doctor, the experience was profoundly enriching; as a human, it was transformative.

Living there for over two months exposed me to a world entirely different from my own, one that challenged and reshaped my perception of life.

As a photographer, I began documenting daily life in the sanatorium in a raw, instinctive way, using a small compact camera. What started as spontaneous documentation slowly evolved into a project, a body of work that reflects both my observation and my presence within that space. Over time, reflection emerged: about that experience, about my own life, and about the residents’ lives.

Life, I came to realize, is the same for all of us, a fleeting, ephemeral lapse of activity, a brief moment of reason or unreason, regardless of who we are, how we are, when or where we are, we just are…

We are all Human (إنسان).

Immersed in a life so different from the one I knew, I found this shared truth: our humanity unites us in all its subtle shades.

In Arabic, the word insan (إنسان) — “Human” — is pronounced “insane.”

We are all, In A Way Insane.