Photographs of Tunisia under the Ben Ali Era

Winckler, J. (Presenter)
Carpenter-Latiri, D. (Presenter)
Karin Jaschke (Presenter)

Centre for Memory, Narrative and Histories

Activity: External talk or presentation › Invited talk

Description

Invited Talk at Centre for Memory, Histories and Narrative, University of Brighton Symposium on the Arab Spring - symposium organised by Dr. Dora Carpenter-Latiri

Period	2012
Event title	Symposium on the Arab Spring
Event type	Conference
Location	Brighton , United KingdomShow on map
Degree of Recognition	National

Keywords

Photography
Arab Spring
Cultural Heritage
Politics

Documents & Links

This set of photographs was taken by photographer Julia Winckler and architectural historian Karin Jaschke during a visit to Tunis in December 2009. We were struck by the omnipresence in the city of propagandistic images of the now-deposed Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Ben Ali’s benign smile and benevolent poses in pictures, posters, and wall paintings and the cheerfulness of the red and white bunting everywhere in town clearly belied the dire state of Tunisian democracy and civil society. At the same time it was a truthful illustration of the omnipresence of an autocratic, corrupt regime of twenty-odd years weighing down on the capital, the country, and its citizens. It was impossible to resist this iconographic excess: we found ourselves shooting photograph after photograph of images of Ben Ali.