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I Special I Spécial

Sophia
Baraket

Sophia Baraket © Views of Tunisia, Béja

Having grown in an image oriented
environment, Sophia fell into photography
when she was a child. At the age of 18
she goes to Paris and enters Spéos – the
international school of photography –
and receives the congratulations of the
jury at the end of her cursus. During an
internship at the Magnum agency, she falls
in love with photo reporting and spends
time with the greatest photographers as
well as historical archives. Back in Tunis
in 2005, Sophia Baraket creates some
events around the image. She produces
and participates in projects and workshops
such as “Les F… Respectueuses”, an
encounter between free thinking women
of the Arab and Mediterranean world. She
also takes part in exhibitions. In 2010, she
spends two months in California where she
works on the project “Do not in the donuts
country…”, a mockery of the numerous
bans in the American society. Back in Tunis
in September 2010 where signs of rebellion
begin to appear, she decides to dedicate
herself to the coverage of the Tunisian
revolution. Her photographs are published
in the international press and on many
websites. When the rebellion breaks out in
Lybia, she is the first Tunisian photographer
to go to Ras Jedir, at the Lybian-Tunisian
border, to document the exodus of refugees
from Lybia. In march 2011, she is recruited
for the the project “Artocratie : InsideOut” by JR, the French photographer who
was first considered underground and
who is now renowned worldwide. Sophia
Baraket works on themes, always trying
to document a story, such as the project
“Childhood mothers” undertaken in
Ouganda or “Les Faire ailleurs”, the story
of Western countries dumping their waste
in North Africa, selected in 2011 by the
African Photography Biennal in Bamako. In
2013, she joined the collective Afreekyama.

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