Marit Snepvangers

With my project An Image of Care, I want to invite the viewer to look more critically at photography. At first glance, these may seem like ordinary portrait photographs of young men, but behind them lies a long and thoughtful process.

I photographed boys around the ages of 18 and 25 who are living and working at the pedagogical farm from the NGO Darna in Tangier. The farm functions as a safety net for them, who for multiple different reasons ended up there.

I realized that groups like the boys on the farm are often portrayed in a particular way when photographed by Western outsiders. Most of the time, they are represented as victims through the lens of their difficult life stories. I became aware of this because several people asked me if I could photograph them so they could tell me their life story.

When they asked me that, I started wondering: who would benefit from that?The boys themselves, or us the audience? I realised early on that if I chose that approach, I would be stripping them of their agency.

I decided to do the opposite. I photographed them in the way they wanted to be photographed, while respecting their personal space and boundaries. The photographs became a homage to them rather than a form of victimisation. This was a long process because I couldn’t speak Arabic or knew a lot of the Moroccan culture and I had to unlearn a lot of my judgments and assumptions about the boys.

Before I started taking photographs, I waited two months. During that time, I slowly got to know them better. I let them come to me to make contact. I made myself present in the space but didn’t demand their attention and I participated in group moments such as eating lunch and attending percussion classes. Slowly I got to know the boys better and their personalities.

After those two months, I felt I had built enough trust with them to start making photographs. I had a couple of rules for myself: I didn’t want them to pose for me. I photographed them with 50 mm lens in order to always ask permission of taking a photo but also not to come to close to respect their personal space. I didn’t want to make sensationalized photos of them but rather capture normal moments of their everyday. I also chose to photograph them exclusively within the farm, keeping them connected to their own environment and context. This approach resulted in a series of photographs and later in a photo installation that I created together with the boys, representing them with dignity and agency, and focusing on their presence, autonomy, and relationship with their environment rather than reducing them to stereotypes.  

The project concludes a three-month artisteducator residency in Tangier, carried out within the framework of the International Master Artisteducator (iMAE) program at ArtEZ University of the Arts, in collaboration with the Darna Association (Tangier), and supported by the educational, research, and dissemination activities of the UNESCO Chair’s Centre for Arts and Learning (UCAL).