Independence Day, Algiers

Independence Day and my last day in Algiers. Half-hearted celebrations, a few more flags and police than usual. Algerians seem largely to ignore the national holiday, with many shops open for business and young couples strolling on the sea front. Nationalism is perhaps here, as elsewhere, only a ghost of contradictions, summoned as troubled cultural expression and conflicted by ethnic grievances. It is also a presiding spirit of resistance to the economic dispossession and police control of Algerians by an oil-rich elite at home, as well to the marginalisation of Algerian minorities in France. It was this spirit that imbued the carnivalesque repossession of public space by Algerians in the centres of Marseille and Paris during the 2010 World Cup.

Water’s Edge, Algiers

Water’s Edge, Algiers

North to North, from Place Kettani, Algiers

A glimpse of freedom on the margins of the city.

North to North, from Place Kettani, Algiers

Between Havana and Izmir

From Shakespeare Road, Brixton, to Boulevard Docteur Frantz Fanon, Algiers. Crossing the looking glass of the Mediterranean, or the Caribbean, Prospero becomes Caliban. In the cross-currents between North and South, East and West, names, passports, skin, and masks are shed as flotsam. I am writing this as I drift through a city somewhere on the map between Havana and Izmir.

Arrival, Algiers, 21 June 2010

Departure, Marseille, 20 June 2010

Paris-Marseille

The Ghost of the Rue de Marseille

Leaving Paris, I photograph one more ghost on the Rue de Marseille, before catching the train for that city.