Rif Spahni ©

HoboEye Photography:
Rif Spahni, Spain

exclusive interview
Rif Spahni was born in Spain. His photography is haunting, distinctive and its images implant themselves in the viewer’s mind and emotions. His documentation of refugee experiences capture, as he has stated, “a landscape of exile, a piece of earth on which [these refugees] live but which is not theirs and which they long to leave in order to return to their homeland. They are temporary inhabitants in a no man s land, a land witness of an exile.

HoboEye:You are currently studying and documenting the Saharaui people from a refugee camp in the Algerian Sahara. Why are you fascinated by this subject, and why is photography the medium you've chosen?

Spahni: I am very much impressed by wars and their social consequences… 

The fact that there exist more then 40 million persons who are displaced from their countries of origin makes me think a lot about the situation in which they find themselfs (and about our own one!). But more over I am interested in the aspect of the refugee camps for this new landscape which is created in a formerly existing landscape, an irreal world within a real world, building, as time goes by, an unic space.

Climatic and geographic cruelty of the regions where those camps are situated add to the critical situation of the exiled. In their extremness, silence and severity, but also in their beauty, they are witnesses of an exile.

Since more then 30 years the Saharauis find themselfs in the camps of Tindouf, from a provisional state of settlement they passed over to a semipermanent one, organizing themselfs in a functional manner.

The geographic situation of their living area (the Hamada of Tindouf) is probably one of the most inhospitable places of the dessert of Sahara with most extreme temperatures. Nevertheless they achieved to build their living system in midst of the dessert becoming part of it.

Photography is my way of work, by means of the camara I am able to express the feelings which I can not express with words. I like to relate things I see or which happen and at the same time expose my feelings and personality in this story. My images reflect, as well from myself as also from the story which I lay open, a very intimate process in which I discover myself step by step.

Without any doubt this would be realizing my project “In No Man’s Land” which is the continuation of the work about Tindouf.

“In No Man’ s Land” is the project of getting deeper into the refugee camps, their placement, surrounding, nature, their people and the global form of it: a new real-irreal landscape.

In fact, I try to continue about the camps in Chad (with the refugees of Darfur). The world is full of beauty but also full of problems and realizing this project I intent to approach the spectator to the theme and to sensibilize him, stimulate his reflexctions and his conscience.  
 
HoboEye: Who are some of your influences?

Spahni: The major influence I am exposed to is the Mediterranean; the sea, it’ s light, it’s climate, it’s people …. All.

Looking out for a physical person, it could be a mixture of the strength of Egon Schiele, the faces of Francis Bacon or the landscapes from Dali. And putting photography in the center, my highest interest goes to Richard Avedon, his hard and penetrant looks which fascinates me.

Another big portraitist whose photographs touch me is Alberto Garcia Alix.

As more documentary photographic images from Bischof, Cartier Bresson or Salgado... All these photographers were able to transmit a lot in graphically simple but at the same time very strong images which interests me very much.

HoboEye: What part does a wandering sensibility play in your work?

Spahni: This is a process of personal development. By the time one knows people, places, situations, ambiences ….mind and spirit get somehow sensibilized which creates an interior disquiet which needs to be formed and widened untill it reaches the form you like it to be.

This disquiet is the tool which avoids waste of time and is the reason by which one always finds more and continue searching.

At the time I decided to travel to the Saharaui camps I had no more knowledge over them then what I read. I was interested in the fact that they were located in this inhospitable and extreme place, but I had no idea about what I would find… Arriving and knowing these people, so hospitable and friendly inspite of having suffered for so many years, seeing these endless, moonlike landscapes where only exists heat, sand and silence ... I have been very much impressed up to an emotional point that I only could take in hands the camara and begin to make pictures trying to capture this landscapes with the reflect of my emotional state.

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