The works are exhibited in the Warehouse B1

In the series of “La salle de classe 1”, Benohoud is portraying moments from his class in which he teaches in Marrakech. The direction always takes place in the same manner reflecting a ritual tendency among the students and the professor. During class, Benohoud randomly selects one or more students, without interrupting the rest and with objects that can be found only in class, he guides them into a scene of a real space which at the same time comprises elements of the imaginary and the supernatural. After the completion of the photo shooting, the professor and his students carry on pretending that nothing has happened.
This game which takes place among the artist and the ‘models’, in which we don’t know exactly how the project affects the participators and the extend of the photographer’s and the students’ role, creates images of enclosure and restraint, making up a simple trick: shifting the trite and the simple into the sphere of the motionless time. The photographer claims that beyond his work’s ‘imaginary sadness’, there are also political approaches: “In these particular pictures I’m not searching to find a unique artistic effect but my attempt is to express, with the help of the simple means that I use, the social, political and religious issues that my students and my self strongly experience”.

Theodore Markoglou