Feu Sans Fumée

Feu Sans Fumée (Made Of Smokeless Fire) is an exploration of LGBTQIA+ identities within Muslim culture in France.

Feu Sans Fumée (Made Of Smokeless Fire) is an exploration of LGBTQIA+ identities within Muslim culture in France. This project is an homage to my uncle Farid who passed away in 2013. Without the ability to speak with him, I turned towards other people carrying these plural identities, often underrepresented and misunderstood.

France has the largest proportion of Muslims in the Western world, according to the latest Special Eurobarometer 493 (2019) the Muslim population in France is estimated to be 5% or 3.35 million. But still, islamophobia is omnipresent. What is the experience of living at the intersection of discrimination from sexual orientation, gender identity and racism? Where can you find positive representation? How do you redefine your religious and cultural heritage?

Although some have had to cut ties with their family, others have reinterpreted the Quran, found ways to heal with their parents, nurtured welcoming and safe community spaces in France. There isn’t a single story. With radical empathy, using both text and portraits, this project aims to create a resource for multi-layered queer identity, for the community and those outside of it, exploring and celebrating the different interpretation of Muslim culture.

© Camille Farrah Lenain - Archival ID photographs of Farid, who passed away in 2013 due to complication from diabetes and AIDS.
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Archival ID photographs of Farid, who passed away in 2013 due to complication from diabetes and AIDS.

© Camille Farrah Lenain - Image from the Feu Sans Fumée photography project
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“The pigeons are a gift from my mother because we made peace not long ago. For a while, I was really at odds with my family. My mother started having a lot of health issues, and I decided to sort things out while she’s still alive. I don’t want her to die in the midst of a conflict, because her death will be a snapshot of that moment in time, frozen for eternity.” Amina, Marseille, 2022

© Camille Farrah Lenain - Image from the Feu Sans Fumée photography project
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“I thank God every day that I’m not straight. When you love someone outside of a norm, you step out of that norm. It’s a relationship to love that goes beyond something. It’s a relationship to love with a capital L... it surpasses something. You love the person, not what they’re supposed to be.” Rizlaine, Paris, 2022

© Camille Farrah Lenain - Image from the Feu Sans Fumée photography project
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“I don’t want to tell myself that I pray just because it’s my duty as a Muslim. For me, in a sense, and in this moment, I don’t feel like I’m whole, whole enough to be able to engage the faith. I don’t want to put myself on a prayer mat when I’m drinking, it’s as if I’m impure and, then I realize, I don’t deserve to put myself on there.” Hilma, Marseille, 2020

© Camille Farrah Lenain - Rizlaine's Qran, Paris, 2022
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Rizlaine's Qran, Paris, 2022

© Camille Farrah Lenain - Image from the Feu Sans Fumée photography project
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“I think Islam saved me a little from getting sucked into heterosexuality. I remember that when I was little, there was this notion of not asking questions about sexuality. But actually, it protected me a lot, a lot. I said to myself, OK, it’s taboo, I’m going to like girls secretly in my head and that’s fine. I created fantasies. I used my imagination.” Noam, Marseille, 2022

© Camille Farrah Lenain - Image from the Feu Sans Fumée photography project
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“It took me eighteen years to come to terms with my gender identity. But it took me twenty-seven to accept my cultural identity... I was at the crossroads of an inferiority complex and deeply internalized racism. Anchored... It is through encounters, conversations, introspection and questioning that the magic of deconstruction began to happen. And what a release... No longer having that weight on your shoulders. Simply be. Fully exist. Living all of one’s identities. Without concessions. Without half measures. Without barriers. And to me, that’s being Queer.” Jonas, Marseille, 2020

© Camille Farrah Lenain - Image from the Feu Sans Fumée photography project
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“This is who I am. And I will love who I am. I am Muslim. I practice my religion. And nothing about this has changed. This is who I am, and I need to be who I am. Because I am me. I am a woman. I must be a woman. And do you know what I think? I will be a woman.” Ramziya, Marseille, 2020

© Camille Farrah Lenain - Grande Mosque of Paris, 2022
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Grande Mosque of Paris, 2022

© Camille Farrah Lenain - Image from the Feu Sans Fumée photography project
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"It is through the eyes of others that you can tell that I am a trans, Moroccan and Muslim woman, or whatever the fuck you see. But from me to myself, I’m just a badass girl named Lalla Rami.” Lalla Rami, Boulogne, 2020

© Camille Farrah Lenain - Ludovic Mohammed, Marseille, 2020
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Ludovic Mohammed, Marseille, 2020

© Camille Farrah Lenain - Image from the Feu Sans Fumée photography project
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“My family perceived femininity in me, so they tried to contain it, to repress and expel it. Why do I dance? A boy doesn’t dance. A boy is supposed to love football. I didn’t like football. A boy is supposed to like Dragon Ball Z, and I preferred Sailor Moon. There was that suspicious look my uncles would give me when I was 6 or 7, but I’ve never been directly attacked in regards to my homosexuality in my family. My mother knows, my aunts are aware. If you ask me, I don’t hide it. But they’re all in denial, stuck on the taboo.” Kacim, Lyon, 2022

© Camille Farrah Lenain - Image from the Feu Sans Fumée photography project
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“I can’t choose between my queer identity and my Algerian identity, the two nurture each other. It’s not just a simple sexual orientation, it’s not just an identity, it’s your whole being. It’s not cultural or a construct, it’s something that’s part of you. So no, you don’t choose your sexuality. I think it’s already quite difficult to be homosexual in societies, even in Western societies. If we had chosen the easy way, we would not have chosen this.” Lucie, Paris, 2022

© Camille Farrah Lenain - Mediterranean Sea, 2020
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Mediterranean Sea, 2020

© Camille Farrah Lenain - Image from the Feu Sans Fumée photography project
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"I was exhausted not to see my experience represented, so I decided to take it upon myself, to stage and create a character who could represent this intersection of identities. For me, identity is not a status quo, but it’s a lived experience and therefore, my life, my reality, is double. I’m no less a dyke than I am Algerian, I’m no less Algerian than I am a dyke." Habibitch, Paris, 2020

© Camille Farrah Lenain - Image from the Feu Sans Fumée photography project
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“It’s like a knot in your stomach, as if you were burning from the inside, as if you felt your heart blazing, and then you say to yourself -- what is going on?" Djalil, Lyon, 2022

© Camille Farrah Lenain - Image from the Feu Sans Fumée photography project
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"The mourning of the gays who have suffered, who are still resilient like a phoenix rising from its ashes... It’s brand new that we’re accepted, but we’re still in pain.” Bouchta, Marseille, 2020

© Camille Farrah Lenain - Image from the Feu Sans Fumée photography project
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“What I really miss is having role models on TV, in the movies, in TV shows, in mangas... Finding yourself represented nowhere is very hard. It’s a little violent what I’m going to say, but it’s something I’ve felt since I was very young... I didn’t expect to live beyond my twenties; I had this quiet conviction that I would die young. I thought that “normal” people who are heterosexual, those people, who find themselves represented in all the media, they manage to project themselves. For me, everything was a permanent blur." Manale, Paris, 2021

© Camille Farrah Lenain - Image from the Feu Sans Fumée photography project
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“If you feel, deep in side your heart, the conviction that God is with you, it’s that God is with you. Despite everything.” Yasmin, Paris, 2022

© Camille Farrah Lenain - Image from the Feu Sans Fumée photography project
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“It’s like an old story that keeps coming back over and over again. I am very melancholic, but it’s my life. Like a lot of gay people’s lives, it’s not an easy life. We are always looking for a little quiet corner for self-preservation. We meditate, we exist in our corner and this photo is a separate universe that we all have within ourselves : a closet, a trunk, a drawer. It’s very mystical. It’s like a past, present and future, it is like eternal.” Bouchta, Marseille, 2020

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