Mectoub

Scarlett is the winner of the Leica Oskar Barnack Award 2016 for her project "Mectoub" (2012 / 2016) realized in seven Arab countries: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, and Lebanon.

In 2012, in the wake of the "Arab Springs", I decided to photograph men while traveling in Morocco. Over a four-year period from North Africa to the Middle East (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Palestine, Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan), I made portraits of a younger generation demonstrating for more individual freedom, and seeking to express who they really are.

“I would like to think that the lives of the Arabic people and their relationship with themselves have been altered. It is their turn to speak out. Take to the streets. They have the means to express themselves and stand up for their rights. Their dreams. Their desire for justice and dignity. Their will to become free citizens, protected by the country’s laws. Freed from submission. Moving on. The debate. About freedom. Theirs. That of others. The Arab world is a fertile breeding ground for all these ideas.” Abdellah Taïa / 2014

“Mectoub is fascinating because of this unveiling, made possible because the photographer is both female and a foreigner. It plunges us deep into our representations and overturns them. Scarlett Coten holds up these copies for us to see, Homo Orientalis specimens of the new generation, in an unfiltered way, just as they are. The images bring to mind the Egyptian choreographer Hazem Header and his piece “Inside Out” dealing with our roles in society and the balance of power, in which he dances in red stiletto heels. Perched on his red high-heels, his head high in the air, he proclaims to us that man’s freedom will come from that of women. Hazem and all the others are part of these young people that were lauded by the Western media in 2011 because they stood up for their right to exist. Nowadays, nobody is interested in them. They are, however, still there. Mectoub puts them back on center stage with photographs that unsettle us because they show a reality that so many prefer not to see: that of the arab male and all its multiple identities. One of complexity and, in particular, modernity." Marianne Roux / On Orient / Octobre 2015