Assyrians

Romane collected testimonies from members of the Assyrian community between Belgium and France, complementing the stories of her own grandfather and the notebooks of her great-grandfather who arrived in France from Iran. The photographer conducted an investigation by gathering the stories of this diaspora composed of different generations. Objects transported during exile, family photos, traditional outfits for festivals, figurines of protective figures from ancient Mesopotamia, landscapes, and maps appear. By blending past and present, Romane photographs by intuition and also uses fiction to evoke this quest for origins present in each of us. A project to keep a memory, a trace. 

To portray a scattered people trying to preserve their connections despite the distance. The members of the community fled their countries: Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Iran. What traces? What memories do they keep of their lands? How to rebuild elsewhere? Are they assimilated in the country where they are? How to perpetuate their culture and language: Aramaic? A collective memory is created through these voices that tell her. 

Romane then went to the Tur Abdin region in Turkey on the border with Syria.  If this community had a country it would be in this territory between Syria, Turkey and Iran.

Cradle of the Assyrian community.  The photographer followed a group of young French and Belgian people to return to their roots for the first time in the land of their ancestors. Throughout the villages she met people who came to rebuild their houses. Between myth and return to basics, the photographer creates a symbolic territory through this people in search of landmarks. What are these links that provide a feeling of belonging to spaces and communities?  Do countries really own the territories they inhabit?  What other territories are possible?

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