allogene \a.lɔ.ʒɛn\
In the search for the feeling of belonging, photographer Pierre Belhasen eventually settled in Marseille, where cultures collide and the harsh city contrasts with the beauty of nature. Allogene documents the energy of the city, its scents, colours and people.
Photography Pierre Belhassen
Allogene \a.lɔ.ʒɛn\
(Anthropology) One who has been settled in a territory for a relatively short time, referring to a group originating elsewhere, and who still has national or ethnic characters that distinguish them from the native population.
(Geology) Having originated elsewhere than in the rock in which they are found, referring to the materials and constituents of rocks.
“In a city where I feel like a stranger, I am on a journey.”
It is a confrontation where I call upon space from my inner landscapes to the sunny hills of Marseille.
I distill colours, gestures and tensions in order to make visible the here and now in this both ancient and modern theatre.
And then comes a feeling which has never really left me. To describe it, one word comes to mind, allochthonous. It translates the notion of being here, ‘next to’ what really belongs there.
Because of my origins, I neither felt comfortable in groups nor in territories and I have remained a stranger to the notion of belonging. As far as I remember, I always felt that state of confusion.
Either being ‘too much’ or ‘not enough’ but never ‘within’. This notion of soundness has long been haunting me till the day I understood that peculiarity and difference could be my allies.
After spending a long time looking for a place to belong to in space and time I eventually sensed I had reached a balance in the limit. I had reached a breaking point where territories clash – the elements and men: the frontier.
It is therefore no accident that I settled down in Marseilles.
A city where cultures collide – sometimes beautifully, sometimes painfully – and where the consuming city goes side by side with the wild untouched beauty of nature.
The senses are challenged by the extremes. Tragedy and lightness. The stench and the wonderful. All going hand in hand. Under the sun, twisted and shattered by violence and light, fates are being sealed.
Here space opens up on the sea and the world beyond. Asylum can be sought, the possibility of freedom…
So I walk on by going where my feet lead me… and wherever they lead me I stay confident, dreaming of a soil where the final barrier can drive as far as the first look.
At first glance, I recognised you.
I had to come all the way here for my eyes to open to you.
Embracing the city.
Your multiple faces make you indiscernible ; perhaps it is why so many clichés depict you… What the mind cannot understand, it explains… but Marseille is unexplainable.
Brand new land where all is contrast; undecipherable and deep city, colours are guiding me into your maze.
Marseille you adopted me, and to tell your tale, I turn to my senses. I always preferred ordinary musing to the run-ups of the mind.
My gaze wanders, looking for an image, a moment that did not happen and yet already disappears… I look for my distance, too far, too close… without even fighting back, I lose myself within your chaos.
Phocaean energy, endless matter made of light and scents, accents and colours, sensual, sometimes distant, absorbs and consumes me.
The sea blinds me, the heat crushes me, I crawl back into your sinuous streets, where shadow wraps our secrets, where your mysteries blow.
In this world in movement, I impose my silence.
A still dance, a silent song, a photograph.
I walk up your hills of stone and concrete, dreamy landscapes where cries of men are lost, here a modern odyssey is written.
Far from the sparkling fasts of other capitals, your richness is elsewhere, there in the smile of a kid, in the raging perfume of a woman, in the ragged voice of a lost soul, in the sea spray the wind ripped from the waves.
The heat of day slowly fades and I come back to the sea.
Twilight already erases my memories.
In my hands your images dig furrows, imaginary lines where fear, and sometimes desire, tumble.
The horizon stares at us, under the mocking laughter of the seagulls.
You have your own journey, and as my eyes close themselves, I think about Baudelaire:
« Aimer à loisir, aimer à mourir, au pays qui te ressemble. »
Marseille, 2015
About Pierre
Pierre Belhassen is a French photographer born in 1978. He is the author of photographic projects that combine colourist work with so-called "street" photography. He explores the genre of "street photography" or photography on the spot, in an approach where color plays a central role.
Based in Marseille, it is through his various travels that he approaches the world as a playground open to the eye. Through photography, he finds a form of writing made of encounters, lights and chances.
Pierre Belhassen's work has been published by M magazine for Leica photography, the photojournalism magazine Epic Stories, LFI magazine, Better photography, Courrier International among others.
His work has been featured at the Voies Off Arles 2016 and FotoIstanbul 2015 festivals. Pierre is a finalist in the LensCulture Street Photography Awards 2016 and winner (2nd place) of the Miami Street Photography Festival 2019.
To see more of his work, visit his website or follow him on Instagram
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