Willi Filz composed this series some ten years before the civil war,
which has been devastating Syria since 2011. If, at the time of its
realisation, the artist aimed at identifying human beings in all their
diversity, outside of all judgment, and taking the portrait of a society
without imposing any political content, today this work bears an extra weight.
Filz's work oscillates between commitment and withdrawal; sometimes this
ambivalence sticks to his work for unexpected reasons, as in the case of this
Syrian series, sometimes it seems provoked by the artist himself. Indeed, if
his photographic series present unknowns, these are sometimes chosen in places
bearing a strong symbolic significance, such as the migratory frontier in
Morocco (in the series Des hommes dans le Nulle Part). The
photographer, through the image, deals with a problematic reality without being
openly positioned about the issue. In ambiguity, only one position is clear: a
plea in favour of humanity.
Filz describes his work as
‘a visual exercise’. The ‘exercise’ lies in the quest for an ‘authentic’
identity that must be seized and, at the same time, in the vigilance not to
impose the very idea of identity on the women and men he is, through his
lens, freeing from a peremptory judgment.
