“You will see, Libétime flies”, she liked to repeat, with a mischievous eye, highlighted with kohl, to any new recruit to the newspaper. She was right. Pillar of the photo department for almost twenty years, queen of iconography, Shereen Mahhouk left her mark on the newspaper with her playfulness, her unusual look, her swirls of menthol cigarettes and her leopard outfits. She died suddenly in Morocco on the night of Tuesday April 30 to Wednesday May 1.
Shereen liked to recharge her batteries in Taroudant where she undoubtedly found a little of her oriental origins. Shereen was beautiful and elegant, like a miniature Persian princess, even in a tracksuit that she readily combined with high-heeled pumps… without forgetting her scooter with which she got around, as a precursor, from the 2000s. Above all, she was funny. , making fun of each other and of herself, always demanding her “coffee with a small pot of milk on the side”, while observing the waiter’s decomposed head.
An only child, she was the great-great-granddaughter of Baha-Allah, founder of the Baha’i faith in favor of the spiritual unity of humanity, a monotheistic religion born in the 19th century. His Palestinian family, originally from Haifa, had to flee to Lebanon. His mother, Maliheh Afnan, Palestinian of Persian origin, close to Edward Saïd, was a recognized painter, currently exhibited in “Présences Arabes” at the Museum of Modern Art in the city of Paris. His father, Syrian, an economist, worked at the International Monetary Fund in New York.
“The world around was fading”
Shereen Mahhouk was born in 1965 in Lebanon and grew up in Beirut. The war pushed her into exile in 1974. She arrived in France, in Paris, where she experienced a total change of scenery in a strict private school, where she would do the 400 moves. Trained in literature at the Sorbonne, she began her career as an iconographer at the magazine World. Then Laurent Abadjian recruited her into the photo department of Release thanks to a “short and convincing handwritten letter” : “I chose her for her great culture and her mastery of foreign languages. She spoke English, Farsi and French in the same sentence. She was luminous and philosophical, hermetic to tensions, very open-minded, an atypical and enriching profile. Joined in 1996 Released, she established herself as a distinct iconographer, sharp, demanding and tenacious, never consensual. “It’s annoying!” she often criticized, frank and whole, about images that were too smooth or too expected.
“She had a very personal way of looking at her interlocutor: she would look into your eyes and touch your arm. The world around me faded away and I still left convinced by his idea for the upcoming photo shoot. remembers photographer Olivier Roller. She liked committed, profound photographers, those who took risks and, above all, were good. “As a photographer, we were disappointed if it wasn’t packed. If Shereen didn’t see any point in your photos, it was because our report was missing a dimension, reports Jérôme Bonnet. She was always free, fair in her choices, very far from illustration but always respected the final choice of the photographer. It represents the quintessence of Libé of an era with people from diverse backgrounds and strong personalities.”
Despite her sometimes extravagant appearance, she was as methodical as she was orderly in her work. Sometimes, Shereen took risks, defending a photo tooth and nail, relying on her biased, original vision, convinced that it was necessary to move away from a narrow perception of the image. Wasn’t that the country the article was talking about? Wrong subject, not on the right date? “Yes, maybe, but it’s not far, and the photo is really good!” she replied to her incredulous interlocutors. And why couldn’t we show people’s backs in der portraits?
Cyril Koeppel, at the time a very young member of the publishing team of Release, regular on the economy pages – “so unaesthetic subject” –remembers real “verbal jousts” with Shereen to whom he tried to pitch the sovereign debt crisis or the fall of Lehman Brothers: “Okay, well, it’s money,” she concluded, definitively. “For an editor constantly under the anxiety that a piece of news will come and take everything away without warning, his conspicuous absence of stress even at the time of closing”, always impressed him if not completely reassured him.
Rough diamond, fragile and powerful
Fascinated by the human psyche, attentive to others, she had a particular sensitivity for shattered destinies, a tenderness for marginal existences. Late in life, courageous and passionate, she studied psychology. Then did shifts in specialized services while occasionally continuing the iconography for the echoes Or Télérama. His health was fragile. One day, one of her many doctors – she had an address book of alternative doctors – suggested that she work on her anchoring to refocus her. She initially refused the proposal. Then he accepted, but on the condition that it was not “too close to the Earth and the ground”. Shereen Mahhouk has a beloved daughter, Dilan, with photographer Antoine d’Agata.
We, who worked with her and who will never be able to forget her, are devastated by this tragic news. We will always carry a little bit of Shereen within us, this slightly perched girl, this rough diamond, fragile and powerful. Above all, it is the giggles that remain, this casual way of welcoming life so as not to show that it is so precious and the word “washi-washa” which she used all the time. In the event of a hard blow, she also said, fatalistically, with a lot of class, “life is a bitch”, before adding with a smile: “And then you die.”
