REILLY DAVIDSON | DATE 6/17/2020

Kader Attia represents the unrepresented in 'Landing Strip'

Published to accompany a landmark larger survey at London’s Hayward Gallery, this book of photographs from French-Algerian artist and activist Kader Attia celebrates Paris’ Algerian transgender community of the late 1990s. Throughout 140 intimate and enlightening photographs, Attia’s lens avoids objectification in favor of an honest portrayal of his subjects’ lives. Documenting moments of sadness, passion and chaos as he follows their narratives from home to street to club, he represents the unrepresented with a remarkable sensitivity that is also reflected in the essays. As noted by essayist Tarek El-Ariss, “These photographs go beyond the colonial past and its indelible traces. In these images, tears of abandonment and betrayal mix with tears of joy and too much laughter. Tears shed over Arcadia Voladkar’s ‘last man,’ who drowned off the coast of Beirut, or over the stories about how clumsy and dull the last man was—these draw new paths that the make-up sometimes covers, and sometimes accentuates.”