This project emerges from years of working with colonial-era archives from Tunisia, including photographs and videos made by French tourists between the 1960s and 1990s. In those images, Tunisia appears as backdrop, framed through palm trees, markets, camels and other familiar exotic markers. In response, Saber Al-Zamouri turns to two formative elements of his own life: the olive trees that define his village and the family who inhabit it. By photographing each tree as a portrait and his relatives against blank backgrounds, he refuses the inherited logic of the picturesque and reclaims both people and place on their own terms.

All images © Saber Al-Zamouri