Words and photography by Kmar Douagi
This article is part of the “The Wawa Complex” issue
This series is a photo essay/interview with queer people from the SWANA region to discuss intimacy, sexuality, body relationships and love.
In Manifesto of Fragility Kmar invites us into the intimacy of a home, into the warmth of tenderness. The fantasy of love ends with a series of sensitive photographic portraits. A recording phone placed on the table captures naive exchanges on the action of loving in the shadow of a LGBTQIA+ identity.
Without prying, she gives a platform to narratives proving that Love is universal and reinvents itself in every story: the dreaminess captured on the film of a silver testimony. The sweetness of a moment, the violence of an exchange, the purity of a story, this is where the most sensitive portraits are born. It is when hearts are raw and powerful that Kmar finds her photographic place. This work is as direct as it is a gesture towards intimate questioning.
This series is directed as a short audiovisual film in two dimensions, a written image and a photographic narrative. Under each story, there is an audio recording of the interview (French/Arabic). The sounded part of the work is still in progress, so I will present some excerpts.
Love is intimacy and vulnerability. Intimacy is vulnerability. It is not being
physically naked, it is being emotionally naked.
[Love] is a vulnerability, since the other sees everything about you and accepts you
with that everything.
Love is to be seen through the eyes of the other.
Love is realizing that we are experiencing our reunion.
I lay my head in your neck, and I hear the sound of my breathing.
What is your definition of love?
V: Well, it’s complicated to ask someone who has never been taught to love to define love. But, if I can give it a substance, I would say that love is to be seen through the eyes of the other. It’s to be seen by the world and to see oneself in the eyes of the other. This implies vulnerability, since the other sees everything about you and accepts you with that everything.
In what ways were you not taught to love?
V: I am the eldest of three children in a single-parent family that experienced the war and the exodus. There was not much room for sentimental education or feelings. I had to learn how to love on my own and continue to learn, until today.
What is your definition of love, P?
P: There’s this urge to go to someone and this fear that they’ll back off. There’s everything I think I know about you, everything I want you to believe about me.
I lay my head in your neck, and I hear the sound of my breathing.
There’s your skin,
There’s your smell,
And, finally, there’s what’s always known about you.
Love is realizing that we are experiencing our reunion.
Who taught you about love? Where or when?
P: I’m still searching. I learn love from relationships, discussions, authors, the shrink, failures in love;
I think I’ve learned most from breakups.
The fact that I’ve never lived something satisfying, which I thought I would find, has forced me to think more about what I am actually looking for. It’s forced me to look deeply at what I thought I wanted and to think about what might bring these things to reality. What I call love has nothing to do with what I thought when I was younger.
I could say things are going well: I’ve been able to introduce my darlings to my family and talk with them openly about my relationships. This is in my close family, I guess, and even still, I avoid talking to certain people. I still don’t talk with them much about queer issues, because I feel like they won’t understand, and I don’t want to justify myself.
But it all started off badly. My mother, father, and big sister didn’t like my gay-ness, and my coming out changed our relationship completely. I think their fear was stemmed mostly in doubt about my homosexuality, that it may have come from a rape in my childhood.
I have little connection with the rest of my family, and I’ve never felt like they had an issue with me being gay. In any case, I think my parents accepted and loved my darlings as they’d appreciate a beautiful daughter. People deal with it politely, and the people who might find it disgusting don’t say so.
