YOUSSEF NABIL

Fragments of a journey
by Rose Issa

I first discovered Youssef Nabil's work in Alexandria in 2000, while celebrating the millennium with friends. There was already a buzz around this young artist, and I was impressed by his lovingly and painstakingly hand-coloured photographs. I first responded to the physical objects themselves; his use of an old, classical technique with a modern, sexy twist.

When we later met in London, I was slightly unsettled by his stare: he has a way of fixing you with his gaze, as if looking beyond you, already behind a camera, photographing. He seems to want to discover the character within you that sets your story in motion, as if casting for a film. His eyes work like a camera.

No wonder most of his photographs look like film stills, tell a story or hide a secret, keeping you in suspense. Could it be that the implied dramas behind his pictures come from his earlier desire to be a filmmaker? Is it his love of the golden age of Egyptian cinema, the 1940's and 1950s' matinées shown on Arab TV, that led him to adapt an older technique - studio settings, hand-coloured photographs - to the new faces that inspire him? Or does this narrative gift come from his literary studies in Cairo?

Youssef Nabil was born in Cairo in 1972, and now lives and works between Cairo, Paris, London and New York. He is now well known for his portraits of stars, artists and friends, often posed in theatrical settings: images of beauty and glamour, scenes of intimacy or violent encounters, of models almost unaware of the photographer's presence. And yet his subjects are complicit in a photographic mis-en-scene: the viewer has to unravel clues, interpret the details. His portraits are clearly derived from film-set photography, where his sitters perform, making him a director who portrays desire, ambiguity, death, secret attractions, and open love. "I like people, and I like the idea of meeting someone I don't know, putting him or her in a different context from their own and then photographing them doing what I tell them to do. I like watching people. I think I am a voyeur by nature."

Youssef Nabil also has a very special relationship with female artists. In 2005 we went together to the lavish opening of Frida Kahlo's retrospective at the Tate Modern in London. I lost Youssef in the crowd - he was far more attentive than me to the artworks, X-raying almost each painting - and I left before him.. I remembered that one of Youssef's earliest works had been about Frida, from his time in Cairo - "My Frida, 1996". He was so immersed in her life, knowing every little incident, that he could see her in others.

When living in Paris, Youssef used to come to London often to work and most of the time he would stay with friends - mostly Natacha Atlas, another muse for him - and we discussed doing an exhibition of female artists, his icons; the people whose work he admired. So he met and photographed the British-Turkish artist Tracey Emin, with whom he struck a friendship; and later many others in New York, like Shirin Neshat, Mona Hatoum, Ghada Amer, Nan Goldin, Adriana Varejão, Marina Abramovic, and recently Louise Bourgeois.

Youssef Nabil is also a hard working, confident and ambitious artist. One of his early self-portraits is of his shadow holding a camera. The tagline states: "I want you to know. I'm gonna be a big, bright shining star. That's what I want, and it's what I'm gonna get." We are left with no doubt that he will get there, for there is no trace of naivety in his character.

His self-portraits portray an outsider, and indicate a state of transition in different cities – Rio de Janeiro, Havana, Paris, London, Athens, Naples… Devoid of attachment, they reflect the artist's nomadic lifestyle, and he is seen mostly from the back, facing a landscape, a rooftop, a beach, sometimes partly naked, and often vulnerable. "I do them in different cities; I was a visitor in all of them and I knew that I must leave… My relation to my whole life is the same… For me it is about coming to a place that is not yours, then having to go…" In Self portrait with the sunset, Rio de Janeiro, his back faces us from a beach overlooking the mountains. The atmosphere is of a twilight zone; a moment associated with complex and potentially ambiguous feelings of loss, transition and nostalgia. In many of these self-portraits, taken in darkness or low light, the atmosphere suggests the end of a journey or nocturnal wanderings. There is also a resigned sadness in the solitary self-portraits.

Other images hint at his obsession with death, parks, beaches, crime scenes, and beds, not unlike the Italian film-maker Pier Paolo Pasolini. "Hope to Die in my Sleep, Self-portrait, Vinales, 2005", says it all. But he has a far simpler answer: "When I was a kid and watching old Egyptian movies, I used to ask my mother about all the actors and where they were. Most of the time the answer was that they were all dead. It was a strange idea for me to watch and love all these beautiful dead people. I think it did something to my subconscious. Later on in my work and when photographing people I always think of how to make this moment eternal, before they die or before I die."

By adding narrative to glamour, Nabil pays homage to those who in some way influenced his work: the Egyptian-Armenian photographer Van Leo (Cairo, 1921-2002), David Lachapelle, with whom he collaborated in New York (1992-1993), and Mario Testino, in Paris (1997-1998). And by inviting us to share his perception of a moment when a drama can unfold anytime, through the enigmatic glimpses of a few lives, loves, and loss, Youssef Nabil takes us on his journey of discovery. Youssef Nabil is an eye.

Rose Issa
London, January 2007

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