“Through his photographic work, Douraïd Souissi addresses the consequences of social, political, and historical realities on the Tunisian people. The photographer reveals the condition of these men with singular silhouettes, abandoned to an uncertain destiny.”
- Institut du Monde Arabe
(translated from French)
“Art that heals.”
- Lana Salman_
“Douraïd Souissi’s portraits seem to caress the bodies of his subjects with light. Amongst so much news and imagery, there‘s finally a light and neutral space that gives something back to them. Perhaps the right to themselves, their bodies, peace, loneliness. Their right to stay back, to protect their image, soul, essence and country. Douraïd Souissi seems to give all that back to us.”
- Karla Calviño Carbajal
“With his “Kef” series, Douraid Souissi has managed to make these majestic landscapes and scenes seem like portraiture. Though faces are nowhere to be found, the memories, the toil, the hopes and dreams, and even the disappointments are all visible”
- Brian Keith Jackson
He gave voice to what is forgotten, poorly looked at. But everything lives, everything vibrates around you. Here, everything is poetry, and your imagination will not rest. Each photograph speaks to you, challenges you, and you don’t want to be disturbed.
- Emna Louzyr, Le Temps
(translated from French)
“The dignity of a point of view demands nothing more than a little humility and the discreet sharing of a light transfigured into ethics. Through the indocility of three-quarter views and backs turned, this art seems to give a chance to all fictions. More than simple portraits, the images of Douraïd Souissi perhaps tell us, in their own way, something of an art of the counter-image.”
- Adnen Jdey, Nawat Magazine
(translated from French)
“On the images steeped in black by photographer Douraïd Souissi, the figures seem to flee the frame. In his portraits of Tunisians, are we witnessing a disappearance? It is a disappearance, but paradoxically perhaps also a reunion, because masks are falling. Perhaps the figures are thus finding themselves again? Sometimes, one needs to disappear before finding oneself again, to make space within.”
- Siegfried Forster, Radio France Internationale
(translated from French)
“A poetry is born that permeates his world. He is a photographer who reflects philosophically on his share of the world—seen, lived—and who embraces his own way of seeing and transmitting it through the prism of his philosophy […]. Go, see, and reflect on his photographic exhibition; you will emerge only more human.”
- Néjib Gaça, La Presse
(translated from French)
“Men turning their backs, surrounded by emptiness, a void to which they seem alien, inspire either calm or, on the contrary, oppression. The purity and perfectly mastered light of these images indeed leave full scope for our interpretations.”
- Anissa Mahdaoui, Huffington Post Maghreb
(translated from French)
“Everything is composed in relation to emptiness. Douraïd works in the opposite way of classical photographers. It is this emptiness that resonates within each of us. He knows how to capture the essential. His approach is minimalist, without frills. The subject always remains at the heart of his concerns.”
- Aïcha Gorgi
(translated from French)
“The reportage by Tunisian photographer Douraïd Souissi on Salammbô in Tunisian public space joins the reflections on the legacy of the novel in modern and contemporary Tunisian literature.”
- The Eye of Photography
“One enters Douraïd Souissi’s photographic exhibition as though stepping into a parallel world, as if encountering the invisible. One penetrates this hypnotic space in silence, to live a religious-like experience at the heart of the dark room. The magic of the half-light operates, modestly softening details while revealing the essential dimension of beings, conferring on them a depth, a velvet texture, an intense presence within the cosmic immensity. If he is interested in the ontological anxiety of the eternal masculine, it is certainly not to glorify the male. Rather, he enriches current and societal debates by offering a different, atypical perspective. Subverting social conventions with a setup that renders guests almost anonymous, he sends them back to the least egocentric part of themselves, while forcing them to accept one another, to discover each other in a soothing, restorative darkness that softens rivalries, that isolates in order to bring closer, stimulating the eye’s acuity up to clairvoyance. Seizing what is most universal in the truth of a solitary moment of meditation, Douraïd Souissi transforms an art gallery into a cavern to reinvent the myth.”
- Hichem ben Ammar, Le Temps
(translated from French)
“A powerful exhibition by Douraïd Souissi, unforgettable. His portraits spit fire and carve themselves indelibly into the visitor’s memory.”
- Hamideddine Bouali, Le Blog du Photographique
(translated from French)
“So much light, so much accuracy in the gaze, and so much emotion as well. Kef is a hymn to the silence that drew the photographer into these lands. A silence imposed by a majestic, timeless nature; vast expanses, wide open spaces, the great bareness in which this region finds itself, which has no other existence in the national present than on the map. This series of photographs is the fruit of an individual spatial experience, stem-ming from a prior mental construction, carried out in solitude, which bears witness to a refined technical mastery, coupled with great sensitivity. When the restraint and sobriety of the artist coincide with the grandeur and spareness of a subject—in this case, the place that is the object of the meditation—we are truly confronted with a work of art.”
- Aïcha Filali, Le Petit Journal
(translated from French)
“Douraid Souissi’s black and white photographs of the Hôtel Salammbo and other Salammbô allusions ponder absorption of Flaubert’s tropes in today’s Tunis.“
- Jackie Wullschlager, Financial Times
“I don’t have anything profound to share on January 14, the date commemorating the Tunisian revolution, except that I am the intellectual product of that historical moment. I spent the last decade of my life thinking about what it means and what it has changed. If there is dignity, Douraïd Souissi knew how to capture it.”
- Lana Salman
“One feels, indeed, the deep respect of the photographer in his relationship with his subjects, whom he reassures by treating them with extreme modesty. No close-ups, no frontal portraits, but rather the freedom of the subject who timidly enters into the game of portraiture and offers only what he chooses to give: a bowed head, a back, a three-quarter profile.”
- Claire Nini, Afrque in Visu
(translated from French)
“A gaze complicit with that of the artist might finally be struck by perceiving, in what his figures allow us to decipher through the phenomenality of darkness, the poetry of Douraïd Souissi’s photographic act: an act never anecdotal, eminently synecdochic.”
- Mohamed-Ali Berhouma, Les Carnets des Imaginaires de l’Atelier
(translated from French)
“He chose to reveal an inner reality that risks being ignored.”
- Marc Monsallier
(translated from French)
“His images tell complex stories and point to the actuality of our world by revealing its structure.”
- Le Petit Journal
(translated from French)
- Institut du Monde Arabe
(translated from French)
“Art that heals.”
- Lana Salman_
“Douraïd Souissi’s portraits seem to caress the bodies of his subjects with light. Amongst so much news and imagery, there‘s finally a light and neutral space that gives something back to them. Perhaps the right to themselves, their bodies, peace, loneliness. Their right to stay back, to protect their image, soul, essence and country. Douraïd Souissi seems to give all that back to us.”
- Karla Calviño Carbajal
“With his “Kef” series, Douraid Souissi has managed to make these majestic landscapes and scenes seem like portraiture. Though faces are nowhere to be found, the memories, the toil, the hopes and dreams, and even the disappointments are all visible”
- Brian Keith Jackson
He gave voice to what is forgotten, poorly looked at. But everything lives, everything vibrates around you. Here, everything is poetry, and your imagination will not rest. Each photograph speaks to you, challenges you, and you don’t want to be disturbed.
- Emna Louzyr, Le Temps
(translated from French)
“The dignity of a point of view demands nothing more than a little humility and the discreet sharing of a light transfigured into ethics. Through the indocility of three-quarter views and backs turned, this art seems to give a chance to all fictions. More than simple portraits, the images of Douraïd Souissi perhaps tell us, in their own way, something of an art of the counter-image.”
- Adnen Jdey, Nawat Magazine
(translated from French)
“On the images steeped in black by photographer Douraïd Souissi, the figures seem to flee the frame. In his portraits of Tunisians, are we witnessing a disappearance? It is a disappearance, but paradoxically perhaps also a reunion, because masks are falling. Perhaps the figures are thus finding themselves again? Sometimes, one needs to disappear before finding oneself again, to make space within.”
- Siegfried Forster, Radio France Internationale
(translated from French)
“A poetry is born that permeates his world. He is a photographer who reflects philosophically on his share of the world—seen, lived—and who embraces his own way of seeing and transmitting it through the prism of his philosophy […]. Go, see, and reflect on his photographic exhibition; you will emerge only more human.”
- Néjib Gaça, La Presse
(translated from French)
“Men turning their backs, surrounded by emptiness, a void to which they seem alien, inspire either calm or, on the contrary, oppression. The purity and perfectly mastered light of these images indeed leave full scope for our interpretations.”
- Anissa Mahdaoui, Huffington Post Maghreb
(translated from French)
“Everything is composed in relation to emptiness. Douraïd works in the opposite way of classical photographers. It is this emptiness that resonates within each of us. He knows how to capture the essential. His approach is minimalist, without frills. The subject always remains at the heart of his concerns.”
- Aïcha Gorgi
(translated from French)
“The reportage by Tunisian photographer Douraïd Souissi on Salammbô in Tunisian public space joins the reflections on the legacy of the novel in modern and contemporary Tunisian literature.”
- The Eye of Photography
“One enters Douraïd Souissi’s photographic exhibition as though stepping into a parallel world, as if encountering the invisible. One penetrates this hypnotic space in silence, to live a religious-like experience at the heart of the dark room. The magic of the half-light operates, modestly softening details while revealing the essential dimension of beings, conferring on them a depth, a velvet texture, an intense presence within the cosmic immensity. If he is interested in the ontological anxiety of the eternal masculine, it is certainly not to glorify the male. Rather, he enriches current and societal debates by offering a different, atypical perspective. Subverting social conventions with a setup that renders guests almost anonymous, he sends them back to the least egocentric part of themselves, while forcing them to accept one another, to discover each other in a soothing, restorative darkness that softens rivalries, that isolates in order to bring closer, stimulating the eye’s acuity up to clairvoyance. Seizing what is most universal in the truth of a solitary moment of meditation, Douraïd Souissi transforms an art gallery into a cavern to reinvent the myth.”
- Hichem ben Ammar, Le Temps
(translated from French)
“A powerful exhibition by Douraïd Souissi, unforgettable. His portraits spit fire and carve themselves indelibly into the visitor’s memory.”
- Hamideddine Bouali, Le Blog du Photographique
(translated from French)
“So much light, so much accuracy in the gaze, and so much emotion as well. Kef is a hymn to the silence that drew the photographer into these lands. A silence imposed by a majestic, timeless nature; vast expanses, wide open spaces, the great bareness in which this region finds itself, which has no other existence in the national present than on the map. This series of photographs is the fruit of an individual spatial experience, stem-ming from a prior mental construction, carried out in solitude, which bears witness to a refined technical mastery, coupled with great sensitivity. When the restraint and sobriety of the artist coincide with the grandeur and spareness of a subject—in this case, the place that is the object of the meditation—we are truly confronted with a work of art.”
- Aïcha Filali, Le Petit Journal
(translated from French)
“Douraid Souissi’s black and white photographs of the Hôtel Salammbo and other Salammbô allusions ponder absorption of Flaubert’s tropes in today’s Tunis.“
- Jackie Wullschlager, Financial Times
“I don’t have anything profound to share on January 14, the date commemorating the Tunisian revolution, except that I am the intellectual product of that historical moment. I spent the last decade of my life thinking about what it means and what it has changed. If there is dignity, Douraïd Souissi knew how to capture it.”
- Lana Salman
“One feels, indeed, the deep respect of the photographer in his relationship with his subjects, whom he reassures by treating them with extreme modesty. No close-ups, no frontal portraits, but rather the freedom of the subject who timidly enters into the game of portraiture and offers only what he chooses to give: a bowed head, a back, a three-quarter profile.”
- Claire Nini, Afrque in Visu
(translated from French)
“A gaze complicit with that of the artist might finally be struck by perceiving, in what his figures allow us to decipher through the phenomenality of darkness, the poetry of Douraïd Souissi’s photographic act: an act never anecdotal, eminently synecdochic.”
- Mohamed-Ali Berhouma, Les Carnets des Imaginaires de l’Atelier
(translated from French)
“He chose to reveal an inner reality that risks being ignored.”
- Marc Monsallier
(translated from French)
“His images tell complex stories and point to the actuality of our world by revealing its structure.”
- Le Petit Journal
(translated from French)