Blur

Mehdi Ait El Mallali

2025 — Paris, France

About this series

For a year I photographed an abandoned bus stop near my home. Though no buses stopped there anymore, people still sat as if waiting. Some mistook it for a working stop, others simply used it as a bench. They drank, rested, or passed time, turning this forgotten place into something alive.
Seen through its misted glass, the stop became a fragile border, an illusion of another world. Light, shadows, and silhouettes shifted across its surface, echoing solitude and quiet gestures.
Day after day, traces of human presence appeared and vanished, leaving a silent archive of glances and pauses. In this ordinary space, a subtle melancholy emerged, where anonymity found a fleeting form of remembrance.

Photographer: Mehdi Ait El Mallali
Nationality: Moroccan
Based in: Paris, France
Website: mehdiaitelmallali.com
Instagram: @meddyait

Born in 1997 in El Hajeb (Morocco). Lives and works in Paris (France).
Self-taught photographer Mehdi Ait El Mallali began his practice as a teenager, documenting the topography and morphology of the Atlas Mountains where he grew up. His work soon expanded beyond geography to embrace broader territories, guided by a constant urge to observe and translate the world around him. For Mehdi, photography is not only an act of seeing but a manifesto of freedom, an open field for narrative, memory and imagination.
After traveling through remote provinces of Morocco, his focus shifted toward sociological and intimate themes. Deeply influenced by cinema, his images draw on its aesthetic dimensions such as light, temporality and silence to transform material into poetic resonance.
His work has been presented in group exhibitions at Galerie 127, the Montélimar Photo Festival, the National Photography Museum in Rabat, the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair in Marrakech and during the Nuits Photos in Essaouira. In 2024, he received the first prize of the Mustaqbal Award and was awarded a residency at the Montresso* Art Foundation in Marrakech, where he is now a resident artist and presented his first solo exhibition. He also completed a residency with the Kamel Lazaar Foundation in Tunisia.
Solo Exhibitions
“Blur” solo show – Montresso Art Foundation – November 2024