I came across Youssef ’s work in Cairo about seven years ago. I was in Egypt to accept a prize from the Cairo Biennale, and while there I decided to look around some galleries. After going down lots of little alleyways I finally arrived in what I can only describe as a mechanics area – a place full of garages, rust and old bits of car. I found Youssef ’s work at the Townhouse Gallery. I was quite taken aback. The photos were very beautiful, evocative and, in the most old-fashioned kind of way, very camp. They had a hand-tinted ghostliness that I found very attractive. Youssef seemed to be dealing with very personal subject matter, and to be very open. Later I met him on a boat sailing down the Nile. We both talked about how we had made work with our mothers in, and about notions and ideas of leaving home. Not in a literal sense but in a metaphysical sense, understanding that we are just our true selves and not necessarily a constant attachment to another. This is what I liked about Youssef ’s work – whether he is starring in the photo or taking the photo, from all angles he stands alone. Youssef sees the world in a truly singular way and I find that very beautiful.

Tracey Emin
London, April 2007

There is a wonderful sense of calm about Youssef Nabil’s photographs. It’s a type of calm that says to the viewer, nothing in this space is harmful. Within the confines of his frames, there is a sense of security and pleasure. The photographs project an overriding message that it’s right to love. They speak to the vulnerable condition of desire, the risks of commitment and the fear of loss. Nabil’s photography consciously flirts with notions of the exotic and the erotic. The images slide seamlessly across a variety of different genres; they meld together to create a dreamlike mise en scène. The photographs operate as visual narcotics, inviting the viewer into a place of transgressive otherness, a place that breaks with convention.

Nabil’s visual web draws us into the land of fantasy and strategies for survival, for without dreams we are, in fact, doomed. His photographs call to mind the character Molina in Manuel Puig’s famous 1976 novel Kiss of the Spider Woman. Nabil, like Molina, leaves us hanging on a thread of narrative tension. These photographs are loaded with a mood of quiet despair; they contain a sense of waiting that on reflection addresses a deep underlying personal/political message that talks to issues of desire and freedom. The luxury we have of looking at these images contrasts sharply with the reality of those who are forced to love in secret.

Mark Sealy
London, May 2007

Youssef Nabil creates situations that linger between night and day; liminal moments, between our worldly realities and deep, carefree sleep, where the concerns of time are absent and dreams serene. Our minds wander, desires are alerted; the pictures bring back memories of lovers undisturbed, sleeping late. Who is this boy? A burly, hairy leg, the muscular bicep, his sensuous lips, his dark brows and pronounced eyelashes, the curve of his arse, the unshaven face, the large forearm, the soft nipple, the dark pubic hair; lust stirs. Let’s lie beside him, in his arms, him in our arms, asleep, away from reality and responsibility, entranced in an embrace.

Then we remember we are viewers and this is a photograph. We are transgressing, voyeurs intruding on an intimate, sacred space reserved for sleep and tender love.

The boys continue to sleep. Eyes closed, they lie on their sides, vulnerable, often naked, entwined with sheets and on rose-patterned cloths, unaware of us. But they are aware. The scenes are carefully composed; the boys are complicit in these intimate encounters. Nabil leaves us uncertain of fact and fiction, evoking situations on the edge of our awareness, between self-conscious and subconscious, between him and his friends. Scenes are played out on beds, places of rest and of dreams, in shadow and soft light, away from the sun and the scrutiny of the world. In these pictures, silence resonates, emotions are subdued. Still, we find ourselves wondering if these situations involve love or lust, affection or passion. And even as we acknowledge these uncertainties, we set out on our own journey trying to understand the conflicting emotions stirred by the ambiguities Nabil has initiated.

Between the odalisques Nabil intersperses portraits of himself. He positions himself as both viewer and subject, as he lies in bed smoking next to a doll, or naked beside a fire, or on a beach, head down with a distant moon in a dark sky. At the end of the sequence, he turns away on a beach in Rio at sunset, and, finally, looks down into the sea on the shores of Havana in daylight. Again this unsettles the viewer’s mind and eye – when is this an image of Nabil, when is it of others? This counterpoint also makes us wonder about the relationships between photographs and between the boys and Nabil – are they friends, lovers, or simply models in dreamy tableaux?

In other respects, too, these seemingly innocent scenarios are not as they seem. We notice Arabic text on a book on a bedside table, an Egyptian carpet, a shisha, the Middle Eastern thaubs the boys wear, their dark features, their names – Mohamed, Amir, Yassin, Ahmed, Rashid – and the titles, such as Not afraid to love and What have we done wrong. Slowly, we realise that these scenes of intimacy are transgressive in the milieu of Arabic culture. Such tenderness can only manifest itself secretly in the privacy of a bedroom; it cannot have a life outdoors for all to see and share. It belongs to a twilight zone and must remain hidden there.

Nabil’s imagery subtly shifts the way we see the realms of sleep and of intimacy, particularly between men. Such imagery is rarely acknowledged in Western art practice; the line drawings of David Hockney or the photographs of Wolfgang Tillmans come to mind. In the history of art, the male nude is rarely portrayed quietly on its own terms. It has had a life as motif in mythology or religious imagery and on the edge of pornography. By contrast, Nabil’s nudes are considered and conscious, and they alter our perception of a space and a realm where we spend the greater part of our lives, yet generally ignore once we wake.

Through hand-colouring and tinting his silver gelatin prints, Nabil also discreetly disrupts our notion of the medium. His process recalls the acts of both painting and photography, and in terms of photography these are, and are not, colour photographs. Nabil’s colouring alludes perhaps to an imagined era when life was less rushed and love innocent; to his hometown Cairo, in the cosmopolitan war and pre-revolutionary years, photographed so evocatively by the Armenian-Egyptian Van Leo who conveyed the fantasies and flamboyance of Egyptian and expatriate society and movie stars. The tones are nostalgic, evoking moments of longing, distant in time and place. Yet, on looking closely, it is apparent that these boys are of our time. We realise, once again, that these scenes are not as they seem. As this realisation dawns, we return to the present, set aside our fantasies, our sadness, and continue with our lives, albeit reluctantly, in daylight.

Michael Stevenson
Cape Town, May 2007

Les photographies de Youssef Nabil nous renvoient toujours inévitablement vers un ailleurs temporel. Un passé où l’obsession du détail, les parfums surannés et la volonté manifeste de changer la nature des choses et des êtres n’étaient pas une démarche honteuse. Reproduire la réalité, comme des mémorialistes fidèles, n’était pas l’objectif de cette époque qui semble avoir survécu au temps. Notre siècle, matérialiste et concret, a banni toute poésie hors du champ de l’art contemporain. Les intellectuels qui nous gouvernent et qui veillent au bon goût, à la pensée juste et au nouvel ordre moral ne veulent plus être pris en flagrant délit d’émotion. Ils ont tort. Qu’est la vie sans émotion? Qu’est l’art sans émotion? Youssef Nabil est un sentimental et s’amuse à aller à l’encontre des idées dominantes. Il n’a pas peur des sentiments parce qu’il ne s’y trouve aucune recherche stérile d’un passé révolu. Il sait que les sentiments sont ce qui fondent la nature humaine et, partant, toute prétention artistique.

Ses images, revenons-y, portent en elle le même parfum magique que les madeleines de sa grand-mère évoquaient à Proust. Non pas de ces sentimentaux qui pleurent sur leur passé ou qui cultivent une nostalgie inutile, mais quelqu’un qui s’appuie sur le sentiment pour regarder notre monde contemporain avec une poésie qui échappe à la géographie temporelle. On se souvient de ces photographes arméniens débarqués en Ethiopie à la fin du dix-neuvième siècle. D’autres, dans le même temps, faisaient le voyage du Caire. La photographie en noir et blanc voulait singer le réel. Ils ont compris qu’il n’existait, qu’il ne pouvait exister de réel autre que le monde tangible et palpable que nous foulions de nos pieds. Alors ils ont tourné le dos à cette prétention prométhéenne pour se réfugier dans la reconstitution d’un univers onirique. Un univers dans lequel, enfin les couleurs seraient à l’honneur. Un foisonnement, une fête du regard comme autant de bouquets de vie. Nabil a suivi leur trace. Comme l’exige cette manière particulière d’apparaître au monde ou de faire apparaître le monde, il a suivi un apprentissage. Un vrai. Auprès d’un maître, comme il se doit. Car l’émotion ne s’invente pas dans les écoles ni avec des ordinateurs. L’émotion est une tâche quotidienne, parfois ingrate, qu’il faut apprendre à maîtriser. C’est un langage qui n’est pas à la portée du premier venu, un vocabulaire qui ne va pas de soi.

Initiation. Le mot magique. Nabil s’est initié et en s’initiant, il ne s’est pas simplement familiarisé avec une technique, mais avec un esprit. Une façon de voir le monde. C’est sans doute ainsi qu’il a compris qu’il nous revenait, à tous, d’élaborer notre propre univers, d’être les artisans de nos propres révélations. Son espace de prédilection est le portrait. Pouvait-il en être autrement lorsque l’on s’est donné pour tâche d’explorer le mystère humain? Qu’est un portrait si ce n’est le reflet de notre regard? Comme dans le roman d’Oscar Wilde, le regard amoureux que Nabil porte sur ses sujets les transfigure et les projette dans une dimension surréelle. Ils ne sont plus eux-mêmes, mais ce qu’il en a vu. Nous ne sommes plus dans le domaine de la photographie, évidemment. Bien sûr, il y a des séances de prise de vue. Bien sûr, il y a des tirages. Mais ensuite commence l’ouvrage de l’artisan, du peintre qui transfigure le réel pour en faire un tableau impressionniste. Les couleurs sont à lui. Elles n’entrent pas dans le cadre de la reproduction mais dans celui, plus vaste, de la création dans le sens le plus pur, à savoir l’invention. Il transfigure au fil des jours et des coups de pinceau une matière dont le sens ne semble venir à la lumière qu’après cette alchimie des couleurs.

C’est sans doute la raison pour laquelle aucune de ses images n’est anonyme. Non pas au sens où il ne s’intéresserait qu’à la personnalité publique des gens qu’il immortalise. Bien au contraire. C’est d’abord le privé qui compte. La relation privilégiée qui s’est forgée entre deux êtres. Fussent-ils des célébrités, comme ce fut le cas, ou des inconnus, il s’agit toujours d’êtres avec lesquels il entretient un rapport particulier. Comme cette Frida Kahlo qu’il a fait ressurgir de ses rêves pour l’incarner dans une projection fantasmée. Cette quête de l’intime s’illustre sans plus aucune ambiguïté à travers les autoportraits qui jalonnent son travail et éclairent sur sa manière de faire et sur sa quête. Si c’est lui qui désormais figure sur ces images, elles n’en participent pas moins au même projet artistique. Qu’il se mette en scène ou qu’il scénographie d’autres que lui, nous sommes toujours dans le même univers: celui du journal intime.

Simon Njami
San Francisco, Avril 2007

Youssef Nabil’s photographs always, inevitably, take us back to another time. A past where attention to detail, oldfashioned fragrances and a manifest wish to change the nature of things and of beings is not shameful. To reproduce reality, like faithful memoirists, wasn’t the objective of this era that survives in our time in Nabil’s work. Our century, materialist and concrete, has banished the poetic from the realm of contemporary art. The intellectuals who rule us and determine good taste don’t want to be caught out by emotion when thinking about justice and the new moral order. They are wrong. What is life without emotion? What is art without emotion? Nabil is a romantic and relishes going against the prevailing ideas of our time. He is not afraid of exploring the emotive because he is not engaged in a fruitless search for a past long gone. He knows that emotions are integral to human nature and, consequently, to all artistic projects.

His images carry the same magical associations and aromas that madeleines evoked for Proust. Rather than being sentimental and crying over the past or indulging in senseless nostalgia, Nabil instead emphasises emotion as a way of observing the world with a poetry that transcends time and place. The Armenian photographers who arrived in Ethiopia at the end of the nineteenth century, as well as those who travelled to Cairo, come to mind. Black and white photography aimed to reproduce an objective reality. But for them, there existed no reality other than the world we see and feel. So they turned their backs on black and white photography’s Promethean pretensions and took refuge in a universe of dreams. A universe in which colours would finally have a place of honour. Abundance, a feast for the eye, bouquets of life. Nabil follows in their footsteps. This way of viewing the world required that he undertake an apprenticeship in colouring. A real one. With a master, as is the tradition. Because expressing emotion cannot be learnt in schools or in the world of computers. Learning to express emotion is a daily task, sometimes an unrewarding one, a task that has to be mastered. It is a language that is not easily understood, a vocabulary that is not easily learnt.

Initiation. The magical word. Nabil was initiated in the tradition and, in initiating himself, he didn’t simply learn a technique, he gained a sensibility. A particular way of seeing the world. Because of that, he certainly understood that we all have the right, every one of us, to expand our own universe and to be the artists of our own revelations. His favourite subject is the portrait. Could it be otherwise when one has chosen to explore the mystery of humanity? What is a portrait other than the reflection of our gaze? As in Oscar Wilde’s novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, the loving eye that Nabil directs towards his subjects transforms and takes them into a surreal realm. They are no longer themselves but rather what he imagines them to be. We are definitely no longer within the bounds of photography. Of course, there are the actual photographic shots and, of course, there are the technicalities of printing. But for Nabil, the work of the artist starts thereafter, like a painter who transforms reality into an impressionistic image. The colours are his. They are not the reproduction of an illusory reality; rather they are imagined and invented, but also more real. Over many days, with the strokes of his brush, he slowly transforms a subject with his alchemy of colours.

This is why none of his images are left untitled. Not in the sense that they are about a public persona; on the contrary, the private or intimate relationship between two people comes first. Whether they are celebrities or friends unknown to us, he depicts individuals with whom he has a special connection. This is the case with Frida Kahlo, who emerges from his dreams reincarnated into a fantasised portrait. This quest for the intimate is also clearly illustrated in his selfportraits which illuminate his art and his quest. If it is him or someone else in his images, they all partake in the same artistic pursuit. Whether he stages himself or others in his photographs, we remain in the same universe, the universe of his private diary. Simon Njami San Francisco, April 2007 Translation by Catherine Gadeyne

Simon Njami
San Francisco, Avril 2007