The Lady of the bees

Na Tassadit and Dani Martinez, Kabylie, Algeria (picture by stebaraz, 2007)

Na Tassadit is an old artist who is trying to preserve the tradition of berber women to paint scenes about bees and nature on the inner walls of berber houses.

Young generations are not interested in preserving the tradition, but Na Tassadit receives the help of Denis Martinez, an energic Spanish-Algerian artist.

And - as she finishes to explain to the audience her story - she jumps into Dani's arms and she starts crying.

Please check the multimedia slideshow at the following link:

The Lady of the Bees

(italian only)

Kabylie, Algeria, and my first published pictures

Kabylie, Algeria (picture by stebaraz, 2007)

In mid-July I had the chance to ho go to Algeria with a friend of mine, Christian Elia aka "Chicco", a journalist for the www.peacereporter.net website.
He was in charge to write some articles about Kabylie, the berber region of Algeria, and he asked me to join him as a photographer.

We stayed in Algeria for about 10 days, and we had the chance to follow the events of the "Raconte-Arts" Festival, a festival aimed to promote the conservation of berber culture, thanks to movie screenings, poetry readings and artistic performances and workshops.

After the trip, we have produced some articles and multimedia presentations about our trip: the first number of the Peacereporter Magazine (a spin-off of the website) opens with an article about the elusive presence of Islamic armed groups in the region.

While the title of the story is quite scary ("Kabylie, the headquarter of Al-Qaeda in Maghreb", I felt safe in Kabylie: we've been always surrounded by our friend Karim, an algerian guy who spent last 10 years in Italy (he spent one year in Baghdad too, but this is another story), and currently works in Turin as an educator and as a journalist.

The festival was organized by his brother Hassan, and so they invited us to go there and take a look at how life is in Algeria.

We discovered a beautiful region - mountains, woods, rivers - and a brave and proud people who welcomed us with incredible hospitality.

In the next days I'll come back with a more detailed post; until then, you may take a look at some of my pictures at this link: my pictures from Kabylie.


Enjoy !