The “nomadic nomadic world”, as idealized by the English writer Bruce Chatwin, is gone.

Many formerly nomadic communities have settled down and are trying to come to terms with the challenges of today's world that are threatening to supplant their cultures.

These cultures are of particular interest to the Frankfurt photographer Ferhat Bouda, who has been traveling to remote villages in the mountains and deserts of North Africa for more than a decade to capture the everyday life of Berber tribes, who prefer to call themselves Imazighen (“free people”), to document.

Christian Riethmuller

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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Bouda's interest is no accident.

Born in Algeria in 1976, he himself comes from a Berber family in Kabylia, in north-eastern Algeria.

After the early death of his father, his grandmother was an extremely important reference person for Bouda, to whom he also credits the choice of his current profession.

In her later years, the grandmother liked to sit in front of the television, but never understood a word, as almost all channels only broadcast in Arabic, but not in Tamazight, grandma's Berber mother tongue.

"At the time, I swore to myself that one day I would go to Europe and study film there so that I could shoot a film for her in Tamazight," says Bouda, who actually began studying visual communication in Paris in 2000, but found his passion there discovered for photography

At market stalls and at weddings

Various awards, numerous exhibitions and publications in important magazines and newspapers, including Geo, Paris Match, The New York Times and Der Spiegel, adorn a career that, however, did not lead straight to the exhibition areas of renowned institutions such as the Fotografie Forum Frankfurt, where currently under the Title "Photographs and Diaries" is a selection of Bouda's photo essays from various North African countries, but also from Mongolia and Frankfurt, which is well worth seeing.

When Bouda came to the Main for love in 2005, he was a completely blank slate.

He made his first contacts through the Städelschule evening school, which still existed at the time, and through courses at the FFF Academy of the Fotografie Forum, but also worked at the market stalls of the organic retailer Querbeet, where the charming salesman is still fondly remembered today, accepted commissions as a wedding photographer, before he first reached a larger audience in 2010 with the calendar "Feste der Welt - Welt der Feste" about religious ceremonies and rituals in Frankfurt.

Kept in black and white, these pictures showed Bouda's special feeling for people and moments, but above all revealed his willingness to get involved in situations, to capture moods and atmospheres.

This admittance is still important to him in his work today.

As a result, he almost never sets off on his photographic excursions with a commission, but with an idea that, at best, adds up to a visual narrative.

The results of these trips, which he pre-financed, are then offered through the Paris-based Agence VU, of which Bouda has been a member since 2014.

Documented climate change

In addition to media companies, his customers also include aid organizations such as “Action contre la Faim”, for which he documented the effects of climate change on the way of life of nomadic communities in Chad last year.

There it is the dwindling access to water that threatens the traditional way of life of the people, elsewhere it is political conflicts.

In the "Tamurt" series, which was created in Algeria over a period of 15 years, Bouda shows the struggle of the Kabyles for their culture and their identity, in the "Azawad" series, which was photographed in Mali, the Tuareg fight against the Malian army.

Bouda also documented the life of the Tuareg in Niger, where they still live as semi-nomads and consciously evade assimilation.

Their main source of income is livestock, which the nomadic community that Bouda visited in Mongolia a few years ago has all but lost.

Instead, the people there have to eke out an existence in the harsh winter on garbage dumps or in the sewage system.

The nomadic world as they knew it is gone.

The exhibition “Ferhat Bouda.

Photographs and Diaries” is at the Fotografie Forum Frankfurt, Braubachstr.

30-32, see.

Opening times: Tuesday to Sunday 11 a.m. to 6 p.m