Mohamed Bourouissa

In his work Mohamed Bourouissa (born in Blida in 1978) focuses on exploring the lives of marginalized groups, mainly through photography. He does the bulk of his work in culturally and socially peripheral locations, where he observes and captures everyday life on camera. His images break with the simplifying principles of mass media and offer a multifaceted portrait of social reality.

Inkjet prints, dimensions variable

Mohamed Bourouissa’s series Shoplifters shows people who have been caught stealing from a supermarket in Brooklyn. The work showcases a number of edited Polaroid snapshots that the supermarket owner took of the culprits and posted publicly at the store entrance, near the security guard. The thieves hold the stolen merchandise up to the camera – simple foods, like eggs and fruit, along with laundry detergent, beer, and liquor. But because this exposure takes such an abusive form, the pictures seem to condemn not the thieves themselves so much as their precarious living conditions on the outskirts of the capitalist big city, where ever-mounting poverty threatens access to even everyday items. With his series Bourouissa points to the various dimensions of social injustice and how wider contexts are experienced at the individual level.