Family Matters: An homage to collective care

PHOTOGRAPHY ALASSAN DIAWARA | STYLING MERIEM CHEBLAL

When it comes to family, ‘it takes a village’ is an axiom. The phrase itself has been adapted into English from proverbs spanning multiple languages across Africa, where, along with the human species itself, the biological and social foundations of cooperative child-rearing and collective life stem. In Igbo, for example, ora na azu nwa translates to “it takes the community to raise a child”. And in Swahili, mtoto ni wa kila mtu means “a child is everyone’s responsibility”. Ubuntu philosophy, meanwhile, is famously rooted in “I am because we are”.

Beyond community, family is about collaboration: grandparents who live with us, aunts and uncles who share no blood but raise us as their own, and friends who take us into the fold, overstretching themselves and actively living up to the conditions of collective love. It is a way of life echoed across the Ummah, which stems from the root of Umm, meaning ‘mother’.

In Islam, the Ummah is the global community of Muslims worldwide, a family, a rhizome of disparate people who are inherently bonded by faith and moved by a sense of duty towards one another. What’s beautiful is that, throughout all of human history, there are inextricable truths that endure: the need for kinship is perhaps the most perennial. Here, shooting a family network in Paris, we pay homage to the notion of family as a village and gesture towards what it looks like to hold each other, as if it were the first time, every time.

Originally published in Dazed MENA Issue 05 | Order Here

hair GOR DURYAN, makeup NAFIK BOUCHAREB, casting director JULIA ASARO, photo assistant COLIN BERTIN, styling assistant LILIANE RANÇÃO, production 1718, producer ELISA THERRIAUD, cast HAWA TOURE HAMIDOU, AMY, IDRISSA, BENEDICTA, MASSER WILFRIED