Hicham Benohoud – The Classroom

The Classroom explores control and discipline within post-colonial Moroccan identity through staged, uncanny classroom images created between 1994 and 2002. Frustrated by Morocco’s rigid educational system of the 1990s, art teacher Hicham Benohoud used photography as a pedagogical tool, creating a makeshift darkroom in his classroom to foster collaborative and hands-on learning, encouraging students to engage with creativity and identity. The resulting images created with his students are marked by tension and alienation, blending absurdity, humour, and unease in their exquisitely framed and obliquely disarming compositions. In juxtaposing the monotony of the classroom with a visual exploration of both freedom and control, The Classroom builds a playful and existential critique of postcolonial identity, where childlike creative gestures merge into a more ambiguous aesthetic that hints at oppression, violence and isolation. This new publication by Loose Joints draws from the artist's original archive of negatives from the time, building the first comprehensive appraisal of Benohoud’s ground-breaking series while highlighting the modern relevance of the work in its engagement with performance, politics, pedagogy and the body decades ahead of its time. Hicham Benohoud (b. 1968, Marrakech) is a Moroccan visual artist whose innovative photography blends elements of painting and performance to explore identity politics and power relations. Frequently incorporating his own body as a subject, his practice is characterized by staged, constructed imagery, as seen in his acclaimed series La Salle de Classe ( The Classroom ) and Azemmour . A graduate of the École Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Strasbourg, Benohoud's work transforms everyday objects into unsettling, thought-provoking compositions. Benohoud has published two monographs — La Salle de Classe (Les éditions de l'œil, 2001) and Des Lycéens par Eux-mêmes (Les éditions de l'œil, 2002) — and contributed to significant collective photography books, including La Photographie Contemporaine (Scala, 2009) and The Body in Contemporary Art (Thames & Hudson, 2009). His work has been exhibited internationally at the Centre Pompidou, Palais de Tokyo, and Hayward Gallery, and features in prestigious collections such as Tate Modern and Fonds National d’Art Contemporain. He has received numerous accolades, including Prix Photo Service Prize in Arles and the Prix Visa pour la Création, awarded by Cultures France. Risograph Print Edition also available 170 x 230 mm, 144 pages, 76 monotone plates Section-sewn quarterbound hardcover with buckram debossed spine and trimmed edges Edited by Sarah Chaplin Espenon Designed by Loose Joints Studio with an excerpt from Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish Scans and file preparation by LSD, Paris LJ210, March 2025 ISBN 978-1-912719-65-5 Prizes: Winner of PhotoBook of the Year, Paris Photo–Aperture PhotoBook Awards 2025 Shortlisted for Les Rencontres d'Arles 2025 Author Book Award Press: The Guardian (23 March 2025) The Guardian (25 March 2025) Le Monde El Pais De Standaard De Groene Amsterdammer Dazed Middle East British Journal of Photography Creative Review Flaunt Loophole Events: Milan launch, Thursday 5 June, Micamera Exhibition & Book launch Thursday 27 March 6–9pm, LSD Lab, Paris