+216: A Long Call Home
This series is drawn from a long-term photographic ritual: nearly 15 years of returns to my home island of Djerba, Tunisia. What began as homesick snapshots evolved into a quiet act of reconnection—an ongoing visual diary of presence, absence, and the tension between them.
Born in Djerba, I was raised across continents—Tunisia, France, Japan, and now California. While my life dispersed geographically, year after year I found myself drawn back to the same people, places, and rituals. Photography became my way of holding onto that continuity. With each visit, I brought printed images from the previous one—gifts for grandparents, aunts, and cousins. Sometimes I photographed them holding those photos, completing a loop of memory and presence.
In France, I grew up within the Association Djerbienne de France, where our community worked to preserve the island’s cultural identity abroad. My camera became an extension of that effort—a personal archive of evolving traditions, generational shifts, and the quiet transformations of a place both familiar and changing.
Over the years, I’ve seen Djerba grow. Friends have graduated, married, built homes, welcomed children. We’ve lost parents and elders. What was once a village now feels like a small town, reshaped by time and return migration. The threads of belonging stretch and strain. These photographs sit at the crossroads of participation and distance—an act of devotion shadowed by drift.
Before smartphones, dialing +216—from a landline, a phone booth, or the neighborhood taxiphone—was both routine and sacred. Like each photograph, it was a small act of return. This project is an attempt to preserve not just images, but the fragile continuity of memory, identity, and place.
