Algeria we were not volonteers (1954-1962)
The Algerian War is not over. As every war It never leaves veteran’s memory especially conscripts who were 20 years old when they went to Algeria.
50 years after the Evian agreements memory is still difficult to access, still buried. Talking of the life of young conscripts is something still painfull for the majority of people who have experienced these events.
Like a lot of children I grew up with the family’s photo albums. Two albums were made from the leather and with drawings of palms and camels. In these albums there are some pictures of my father holding a gun in a rocky landscape, a dog sitting near him, and a lot of other pictures of my father with other young men who were also topless or in the military suits.
I grew up with these pictures, but my father didn’t spoke a lot of what he called the Algerian War. At this time i was of course unable to understand. Until the day i saw myself in one of the picture of my father. Then came the questions : how should i’ve been able to deal with this at 20 ? Being thrown in a foreign country with a gun in my hand for making war.
This kind of question is the same for every generation going on with the war memories, or simply with the war.
You may agree or not but the Algerian War made the face of today’s France. The scars are still here, deep and untold and never cease to remind us what was done to a generation.
For this project i wanted people who look these pictures to ask themselves « what should it mean to have 20 and being a part of this conflict ». I want people to realize that between the young man they see at the foreground and the old one at the background there is memory. It’s a vivid memory and sometimes it’s very painfull. This is why conscripts are photographed with the documents they kept from this period (incorporation sheet, personal photos, medals, etc.). It is important to understand how real is this remembrance. I also interview concript in order to keep this memory intact and also to avoid transcription errors.
The core of this project is to document, to examine memory, the conscripts’ memory, and through it, of course, understand my father’s one.
In this project i claim that the memory doesn’t have to be judged, it has to be passed by.
The events of the Algerian War continue to be interviewed, questioned, for better understanding. But again the history is nothing without man, without his memory.
It’s important to testify for nowdays knowledge and our understanding, it’s also important for the next generations.
