Look at Her
A young woman faces us. Her expression is solemn. Ornaments, beads and coins frame her face. A tattoo marks her forehead, another her cheek. Her eyes stare into the lens.
We know nothing of her life. Yet, more than a century after the photograph was taken, she seems strangely present.
Perhaps that is where her story begins: in the power of a gaze that became more famous than the woman herself.
“115 Une Ouled Naïl”
The first known caption consists of four words:
“115 Une Ouled Naïl.”
It appears on a monochrome Lehnert & Landrock postcard, dated to around 1905 and now held by the Smithsonian Institution among its materials relating to Algeria. It belongs to the colonial imagery of “types”, in which the individual disappears behind a collective identity.
But that initial attribution is clear: the young woman is presented as an Ouled Naïl.
The World Discovers Her as an Algerian
When Lehnert photographs her, the Ouled Naïl already fascinate the West. Since the late nineteenth century, their dancers, adornments and jewellery have inspired travel accounts, paintings and Orientalist performances. At the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, Algerian and Tunisian dancers draw crowds.
In October 1922, National Geographic publishes the portrait across a full page, under the title:
“Where the Gold of Many Lands Becomes a Wedding Dowry.”
The magazine presents the young woman as an Ouled Naïl from Algeria and credits Rudolf Lehnert and Ernst Landrock with the photograph.
With the arrival of the Internet, she acquires a second life, this time a commercial one, comparable to that of a popular icon: the image is copied, sold as a poster and reinterpreted by artists. This second wave of global circulation is accompanied by an erasure of her Algerian identity.
First Tunisian
In November 2006, the photograph is uploaded to Wikimedia Commons as a picture of a “young Berber woman from Tunisia”. The error spreads. It is repeated on Flickr, in blogs, on history websites and even in image libraries. A contradictory caption even appears: “Ouled Naïl, Tunisia, 1905”.
Then “Berber”
Gradually, the country disappears altogether. The young woman becomes “Berber woman”, “Amazigh woman”, “Berber beauty” or simply an embodiment of the Maghreb.
A colourised version accelerates its circulation further. More appealing, more contemporary, it seems removed from time. The face remains. Everything else disappears: the postcard number, the studio and the original caption fade away.
Moroccan by Proximity
In Marrakech, Riad Magie makes this “Berber woman” the emblem of its world. In 2017, WeLoveBuzz gives her an even more spectacular identity: her face becomes that of Aïcha Kandisha, a figure from Moroccan folklore. Le360, Instagram and Redbubble complete the shift: Moroccan tattoos, #moroccanculture hashtags, “Berber beauty” for sale. The face remains. Algeria has disappeared.
An Icon Without a Country
The power of this photograph has ultimately turned against its history. It is precisely because her gaze is so magnetic that it has aroused so many claims. Everyone has wanted to project their own story onto it: Tunisian, Moroccan, Amazigh, touristic, legendary or decorative. She has become a generic icon of a catch-all Maghreb.
Let us give Algeria back what belongs to Algeria. Fortunately, these successive appropriations have not succeeded in making Algeria invisible: she embodies it wonderfully.