TITLE: "The illusion of reality"

These diptychs, a long term work, illustrate a feeling that regularly runs through me, the feeling of witnessing a moment of reality that both escapes me and seems so customary.
Two eyes, two images.
Impalpable feeling.
Familiarly singular. Singularly familiar.
From the detail to the whole, from the distant to the intimate, from the obvious to the hidden, from the certain to the unexpected, from knowledge to oblivion, a particular conversation creates between different places, spaces, times, in a common universe.
My double nationality, surely, pushes me to dissociate myself, to put myself in opposition and in harmony. What is identity, what is reality when one feels cut in two, shared between two passports, two cultures, two homelands, two continents?
Putting images into dialogue is a natural, vital need. There is no exchange without discussion.

AUTHOR: Samir Belkaid (France)

French-Algerian photographer I was born in 1972. I grew up in Algiers then moved to Paris. After completing a degree in media studies at the ETPA (Ecole de Technicien Polyvalent en Audiovisuel) in Rennes (France), I began to work as technical coordinator of the Grand Gallery of Evolution at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. I then redirected my career towards creative TV and radio sound design. Since the early 2000s, my work has been entirely devoted to street photography.

Exhibitions
2020 : Narratives from Algeria collaborative exhibition, Photophorum Pasquart, Biel/Bienne, Switzerland
2020 : "The illusion of reality", Nuits photographiques de Pierrevert
2020 : If I were..., participative exhibition, Institut pour la photographie, Lille
2016 : Mont-Blanc Photo Festival, Saint-Gervais et aux Contamines-Montjoie (74)
2014 : "Palliative care, if I had known...", Galerie Fait & Cause, Paris
2013 : "The bucolic urban", Strasbourg-Rendez-vous image
2013 : "Alzheimer's, forgetting the sea", Strasbourg-Rendez-vous image

Awards
2021 : Honorable mention, MonoVisions photography awards, series "Way of beings"
2020 : 3rd Black and white category, Paris international street photo awards, series "Once upon a time maybe not"
2020 : Honorable mention, MonoVisions photography awards, series "The illusion of reality"
2019 : Finalist, Maghreb Photography Awards, photo documentary "Algeria: political evolution, pacific revolution"
2019 : Short list, Felix Schoeller Photo Award, photojournalism / editorial photography, "Algeria: political evolution, pacific revolution"
2019 : Short list, Felix Schoeller Photo Award, portrait, "A closer look", portraits of people with mental health issues (APAJH 78-Yvelines, France)
2019 : Finalist, Urban Photo Awards, series "The last shore"
2019 : Finalist, 2019 Fun Photographer of the year
2016 : 1st prize, Mont-Blanc Photo Festival, Mountain and men
2014 : Finalist of the Sophot contest. Photo doc about palliative care
2013 : 1st prize ex aequo, Strasbourg-Rendez-vous image, artistic director Jane Evelyn Atwood, photo doc "Alzheimer's, forgetting the sea"