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.
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. Its creators did not consider it necessary to record her identity. It belongs to the colonial imagery of “types”, in which the individual disappears behind a collective identity. An “object” exotic enough to feature in a cabinet of curiosities.
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 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. The young woman is so beautiful and desirable that everyone desires her.
Global Circulation and the Erasure of Algeria
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”. Never mind that the Naïli live exclusively in Algeria, in the regions of Djelfa, M’Sila and Laghouat, as well as around towns such as Bou Saâda, Biskra and Ghardaïa.
This Tunisian claim rests on the studio’s address: Lehnert & Landrock were based in Tunis. Yet where a photograph was taken and where the woman came from are two different things.
After her identity has been made invisible, her country is obscured. Her ethnicity is falsified. A member of an Arab tribal confederation, the young woman becomes “Berber woman”, “Amazigh woman” or “Berber beauty”, depending on the caption, 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.
Morocco claims her. Inevitably. There, tourism professionals who have unscrupulously recast the Tuareg as Moroccan, despite their absence from Morocco, have set their sights on the young woman. In Marrakech, Riad Magie makes this supposed “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 appropriation even finds institutional support in Montreal. On 17 December 2016, a reinterpretation of the portrait by Moroccan artist Mouad Aboulhana is presented to the director of the Dar Al Maghrib Moroccan Cultural Centre, Jaafar Debbarh, under the title “Femme berbère” (“Berber Woman”). The centre proudly announces the gift on its own website. The photograph shows the work in front of the centre’s branding, the Moroccan flag and a portrait of Mohammed VI. The face of the young Ouled Naïl woman thus enters an official showcase for Moroccan culture; her Algerian origin, however, is never mentioned in the announcement. Certainly not.
The artist bears full responsibility: reusing a historical portrait requires researching and acknowledging its provenance. A pop-art treatment does not remove that obligation. The colours have changed, but the face, tattoos and adornments remain recognisable. Reducing this Algerian woman to a “Berber Woman” in such a setting amounts to a brazen, unmasked heist. The institution that accepts the work and celebrates its creator lends official endorsement to this erasure.
The face remains. Algeria has disappeared.
An Icon Without a Country
The portrait of this young Naïli woman, whose image has been stolen and whose identity has been erased, continues to fascinate those who meet her gaze. Perhaps it is because that gaze is so magnetic that she arouses such covetousness. Everyone projects their own story onto it: Tunisian, Moroccan, Amazigh, touristic, legendary or decorative. She has become a generic icon of a catch-all Maghreb.
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