from one gaze, the other

2007, installation, 24.000 prints on paper (10 x 15 cm), variable dimensions

In a dark room, barely lit by the projector light, a pile of black and white images emerges from the ground. The images have been extracted from a scene of the film Battle of Algiers (1966) directed by Gillo Pontecorvo. The scene shows a young woman in a bar full of people, walking surreptitiously as if trying to go unnoticed, while scrutinising everyone around her. I took one second from this scene and divided it into 24 stills, and then printed one thousand copies of each frame. The 24th image is the only one in which the woman is staring directly into the camera, meeting the spectator’s gaze.