Stolen Images / Samy Benammar

Stolen Images, Samy Benammar’s Exhibition / 29-05

Samy Benammar presents his solo show at Homesession, Thursday 29th May, from 6pm to 9pm.

Stolen Images is a photographic installation drawn from a series taken between 2023 and 2025 in the Aurès Mountains, a historically rich and politically charged region of eastern Algeria.
The work features sites such as the Refuge of the Kahina—a legendary sanctuary at the edge of the Sahara, believed to have sheltered the Amazigh queen during the 7th-century Arab invasions—and Mkaydou, the artist’s homeland, where the Tlet resisted French colonization before playing a key role in the Algerian revolution of 1954.

Through high-contrast black-and-white images and soft, pastel-like textures, the installation explores the mountain as both a mythic figure and a lived terrain. The starkness underscores the Aurès’ rugged seclusion; the softness evokes a dreamlike space layered with memory and loss.
By referencing the visual language of colonial ethnography while situating the work firmly in the present, the project interrogates how landscapes hold and transmit history. Accompanying the exhibition is a booklet containing travel journal excerpts—available only during the show—underscoring the belief that these images must be shared deliberately, not left to disappear.

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Samy Benammar is a filmmaker, photographer, and art critic based in Montreal. Drawing from his Algerian roots and working-class upbringing, his work blends a reflective documentary approach with tactile experimentation. He seeks a form of visual reconciliation while underscoring the irreparable fractures left by fantasies of the past. Often hovering on the edge of disappearance, his images explore the tension between physical and imagined space, between memory, identity, and stone. He has served on the editorial boards of Hors Champ, 24 images, and Panorama-cinéma, and is currently pursuing a PhD on colonial photography in the Aurès region of Algeria.

Collaborating: Écart, Centre Clark and Bureau du Québec à Barcelone.