Latest news with #Benohoud
The Guardian
25-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Leave those kids alone! Teaching through play
During his time as a plastic arts teacher in 1990s Marrakech, he collaborated with his young students to create performative works in the classroom Benohoud created a makeshift darkroom in his classroom and used photography to foster collaborative and hands-on learning, encouraging students to engage with creativity and identity The images created with his students blend absurdity, humour and unease In contrasting classroom monotony with free movement, The Classroom builds a playful critique of postcolonial identity, where childlike creative gestures appear in a more ambiguous aesthetic that hints at oppression, violence and isolation Teaching showed Benohoud how trapped his pupils were both socially and economically, 'my students come from a disadvantaged social background' he says. 'In most of their families, for financial reasons, girls are married off very young while they are still in school. The boys, even if they manage to get their baccalaureate, often end up practicing the profession of their father, who is often a farmer or worker.' Benohoud's classroom became an imagined world in which they could find true freedom 'I had my student wear my sweater. This was the first time I incorporated an object from outside the classroom into the series. I had already exhausted all the available materials in the classroom … storage paper, plastic, tape and so on,' Bonohoud says The work of Benohoud, who is a graduate of the École supérieure des arts décoratifs in Strasbourg, transforms everyday objects into unsettling, thought-provoking compositions 'This was the final image produced in this series. For years, I had envisioned capturing a photograph of a student jumping on to a stool, but I hesitated out of concern that an accident could happen,' says Benohoud 'Despite its apparent simplicity, this image was particularly challenging to capture. The model had to stand on tiptoe for an extended period while maintaining a relaxed facial expression.' Benohoud talks more about this photograph in our My Best Shot interview The new publication of this work draws from the artist's archive, building the first comprehensive appraisal of Benohoud's groundbreaking series while highlighting the modern relevance of the work in its engagement with performance, politics, pedagogy and the body, decades ahead of its time
The Guardian
23-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The big picture: Hicham Benohoud frames the classroom as theatre
No doubt you can sympathise with at least one of the pupils in the image. She has her head down, working hard, so bowed in thought her face is almost pressed right against her paper. A few seats down, a boy adopts a similar pose. One girl has her ankles crossed, while another has hers splayed. Across the room, one girl's shoes are practical, while another's are oddly adult, sandals with heels, hand-me-downs, maybe. You remember how imagination allowed you to disappear, to escape, to take leave of the four walls of the classroom, of the uncomfortable wooden chair and desk at which you tried not to fidget. Or were you the boy breaking the peace, wild and unruly, hanging over a table while lying flat on your stomach, legs dangling, fixing us with your cheeky gaze, as in this image from the Moroccan photographer Hicham Benohoud's book The Classroom? The images were taken between 1994 and 2000 while Benohoud worked as an art teacher and found himself, like the students, stifled by the educational system. The teacher who inspires by introducing simple freedoms into a rigid educational setting is a familiar cinematic trope (To Sir, With Love, Dangerous Minds, Entre les Murs, AKA The Class). Benohoud makes it his own in quiet black-and-white photographs that show how students, when given the opportunity to play and experiment, can redefine their surroundings with the leanest of creative means. Chairs and tables become frames within frames, reveal and conceal faces, as do paper cutouts held up playfully. Strings and tape, cardboard and fabric become interventions in space or extensions of the body, curtains and shrouds, places to hide, to refuse to be seen. Benohoud's project and its emphasis on youthful self-authorship is as much about the present as the past, with how traditional curriculum meets ever-evolving post-colonial identity. 'As soon as I took my camera out, their faces would light up. 'What's he going to get us to do now?' I could feel their gaze on me: we had a real understanding,' the photographer has said of the new energy in the room. These images are portraiture as pedagogy, a reminder that how we see ourselves and others, see and are seen, frame and are framed, makes the world around us visible in myriad shapes and forms – like all the best educations should. The Classroom is published by Loose Joints (£42)
