Where Dust and Water Dream Together does not define resilience; it invites us to recognize it. To create this body of work, Skander Khlif returned to his native Tunisia. Picturing life in oases, deserts, islands, mountains, coastlines, and villages, he explores how memory is tied to place and passed down across generations.
Rather than centering the environmental crisis, Khlif highlights continuity and everyday resilience within it. He resists spectacle. Instead, he listens, makes emotional connections, and works slowly to build trust. The resulting images suggest that life endures, even under stress.
In this conversation for LensCulture, Khlif speaks with Liz Sales about how Tunisians are adapting to shifting landscapes—and how returning home after years abroad deepened his own sense of place.
Liz Sales: Let’s start at the beginning. How did this project come to life?
Skander Khlif: A few years ago, I took an assignment for Noema Magazine to photograph water-related issues in the desert. It was my first real dive into an environmental or ecological story.
That experience made something shift in me. I felt a strong urge to understand how people live with climate change or change in general. It’s not necessarily dramatic floods or disasters. Sometimes, it’s slow, quiet, and yet deeply affecting. That’s what drew me in. The kind of change you don’t always see at first glance.
A year later, I returned to Tunisia—where I grew up, though I’d spent the past 20 years in Germany—and just started working. There was no big plan. I followed the threads as they appeared. One village led to another, one conversation opened up the next. The more I listened, the more I felt this deep pull, not just toward the stories, but toward the land itself.
LS: In your statement, you mention the Gaia hypothesis. How did that idea influence your thinking?
SK: At first, I researched everything—data, reports, and technical articles. But after a while, I felt lost in all that noise. I had all these numbers, yet none captured the emotional quality of what I was seeing. Reading about the Gaia hypothesis helped me find a thread. It suggests that Earth is a self-regulating organism and that everything, humans, animals, plants, is interconnected. Even when something disappears—an island is submerged, a language is lost—there’s still continuity.
This idea helped me make peace with some of the confusion I was feeling. Out in the field, I’d meet people who were clearly struggling, but somehow, they kept going. They stayed. That kind of resilience intrigued me. The Gaia theory offered logic: the connection between people and place carries them forward. If that thread isn’t broken, maybe there’s still a way through this.
LS: You’ve touched on the idea of struggle, but your images don’t read as a catalog of hardship. How do you navigate struggle in your work? What role does it play in the stories you’re telling?
SK: The project spans oases, deserts, islands, mountains, and coastlines—each place is grappling with its own challenges yet connected by a deep relationship to tradition. In fishing villages, people spoke about fewer catches. In desert regions, farmers described how the land is changing.
However, my approach is less about documenting climate-related struggles and more about honoring the resilience endured within them. So, I’ve avoided dividing the work by region or hardship. It’s not a taxonomy of problems. It’s about showing how people remain rooted, even as the ground shifts beneath their feet, like a tree that keeps growing even in poor soil.
LS: Is there an image that holds this sense of resilience especially well for you?
SK: One image that comes to mind is Boys Jumping into the Sea—a photograph of Tunisian youth leaping into the ocean. Although it was originally shot for a previous project, Growing Up Right into the Sea, I included it because it intersects with this project’s themes of memory, the connection between land and sea, and the ongoing bond between people and place. The act of jumping into the sea is something still freely accessible to all.
LS: The sea also connects directly to the title of your project, Where Dust and Water Dream Together. Throughout the series, there’s a recurring tension between these two elements. Can you discuss how dust and water appear as themes in your work?
SK: Tunisia straddles extremes. It’s the northernmost country in Africa, with a coastline that wraps around half of its borders, and a large portion of its land is arid or pure desert. So, dust and water aren’t just metaphors—they’re the physical realities people live between.
The Bus Stop in Tamaghza is a photograph of a dilapidated structure in the mountain area of Tamezret, located in a transitional landscape between oases and aridity. It points to rural migration due to environmental pressures such as groundwater scarcity and the decline of oases. Dust marks the absence of water. Water gives life, but too much—like rising seas—can take it away. They’re opposing forces but deeply intertwined.
The title is about that paradox. And about proximity—how sea and sand can exist in the same breath. I wanted to photograph that closeness.
LS: Speaking of beauty, your careful color grading gives your images an especially poetic aesthetic. Some people see beauty as risky during times of crisis. Do you ever worry that your atmospheric images might soften the sense of urgency of this moment?
SK: That’s something I struggled with early on. I worried: can these images speak to hardship without screaming? But I’ve come to believe that urgency doesn’t always need to shout.
Climate change often unfolds slowly and subtly. This project depicts no single catastrophic event—just change over time, with people adjusting, resisting, and enduring. That quiet resilience felt more honest to me than dramatizing it. And maybe beauty allows us to stay longer with an image, to look closely, to feel the slow erosion rather than turn away from it.
LS: You’ve said that urgency doesn’t have to shout—and your portraits seem to echo that idea. They feel calm and grounded. How did you approach your subjects?
SK: I’ve worked as a street photographer and am used to working quickly. However, with this project, especially at the beginning, I spent a lot of time building relationships. I’d stay in a village for days without taking my camera out, just listening, just being present.
Eventually, I found a balance and learnt to trust my intuition. Sometimes, I knew I needed to stay longer. Other times, I’d take a photo, get a phone number, and return later. That kind of listening—spending time before pressing the shutter—shaped the portraits.
LS: The Music of the Sea intrigued me. Can you tell us more about the musicians in that photo?
SK: I took that photo on the island of Kerkennah in Tunisia. The group is called Borj Lehsaier, a local music ensemble. I captured them performing inside an old fortress that once defended the island. It was a powerful moment—it felt like the past was still alive in that space. I later learned that some fishermen used to bring instruments on their boats, playing and singing as they cast their nets to attract fish. So the group’s music carries that tradition. For me, that portrait is about resilience—how culture keeps people connected to place through time.
LS: Has this project changed your relationship with place?
SK: Completely. I left Tunisia when I was 18 years old. I knew the capital, Tunis, but not the rest. Through this project, I’ve seen its remote villages. Now, I wake up thinking about Tunisia—about this project—every day.
LS: That connection comes through in your work. I heard you’re developing it into a book—how’s that taking shape?
SK: Yes, I’ve started designing it, but I keep delaying the final edit. Not just because I’m a perfectionist, but because I don’t want this project to end. I love being in the field. After two weeks in the city, I start to feel unmoored. As soon as I’m out there again—talking to people, walking the land—I feel grounded. I want the book to reflect that. I want it to be something people connect with emotionally, not just documenting change but asking how we stay connected through it.
