Join artist Oumayma Ben Tanfous for the Toronto launch of her first photobook, Between I and Lands. Ben Tanfous will speak with photographer Tamara Abdul Hadi about the process of creating the book.

"Between I and Lands is an intimate exploration of return, memory, and belonging. Twenty years after leaving Tunisia as a child, I returned to reconnect with a homeland that had lived in my dreams but evolved in my absence. Through landscapes and portraits of strangers, the work examines the tension between memory and reality, longing and loss. These images reflect the fragments of a family and self shaped by displacement, confronting both personal and collective grief in a Tunisia navigating transformation.

Spanning two years, the project retraces places deeply imprinted in my family’s history: Tunis, where I was born; Djerba Island, the land of my ancestors; and the Kerkennah Islands, the site of my childhood summers. This journey became a way to reconcile with a home that felt both distant and familiar.

The book extends beyond photography, it includes journal entries collected between my first return to Tunisia in 2011—the year of the ‘’Jasmine Revolution’’—and 2024, as well as a letter by photography historian Dr. Taous Dahmani, Dear Oumayma – A Note on Return."

124 pages,  20.5 x 26 cm
First printing March 2025
Photographs and texts by Oumayma Ben Tanfous
Dear Oumayma - A Note on Return by Taous Dahmani
Front Cover: Portrait of the author, extracted from a family video archive.
Design Maya Moumne, Studio Safar

• Oumayma Ben Tanfous is a Tunisian photographer who grew up between Tunis and Montreal.
  
  Her work explores themes of community, belonging, and the relationship between identity and the spaces we inhabit. It has taken her across the world and has been exhibited at the McCord Museum, the Conseil des Arts de Montréal, and galleries in London and Brooklyn.
  
  In 2025, she will release her first photobook, Between I and Lands, supported by the Canada Council for the Arts. Now based around the Mediterranean, she continues to deepen her research while taking on commissioned work.