This feature is part of CULTURED’s 2026 Young Photographers list. This year’s list spotlights 14 artists aged 30 or younger from around the globe who are united by a relentless curiosity and an understanding that the photographer’s most important job is identifying what deserves to be seen.
AGE: 28
BASED IN: Paris, France
The Algerian photographer’s images prompt more questions than they answer. Who is that staring straight down the lens? What brought them here? Though he’s currently living and making work in Paris, Rabia plans to shoot his next body of work in North Africa and the Middle East.
What’s the ideal situation for you to make work?
Being in unfamiliar places awakens my imagination. The farther I am from where I began, the more I find myself inventing stories to make sense of what surrounds me.
What questions do your photographs ask?
My photographs explore how identity shifts in response to new environments. They ask whether adaptation is a form of self-preservation, self-invention, or both, and how unfamiliar places slowly become territories we learn to inhabit.
Who are your visual influences?
I’ve always been drawn to the work of Davide Sorrenti. There’s a certain nonchalance in the way he approached his subjects and life itself. His photographs suggest that something can feel deeply meaningful without insisting on its own importance, profound and effortless at the same time.
What do you want to see more of in photography today? Less of?
There is very little doubt in contemporary photography, and I’d like to see more of it. Too often, photography approaches subjects as if it were illustrating a thesis driven by methodology, certainty, and clear conclusions. I believe the medium should offer something else: ambiguity, hesitation, and room for interpretation.
What do you want to do more of in the coming years?
I’d like to focus more on the cultural symbols, traditions, and social questions that shape North Africa and the Middle East. Not to offer answers or take a definitive position, but to create images that invite amore nuanced and honest reading of these realities. I hope my work can make these places feel more accessible to those who are genuinely curious, revealing the complexity, beauty, and contradictions that exist beyond familiar narratives.
Meet more of CULTURED’s 2026 Young Photographers:
Many Photographers Have Been Nominated for a Pulitzer. This One Was Nominated for a Grammy.
Photographer Arielle Gray Wants Her Subjects to Be Unafraid of Softness
For Queer Photographer Ben Jastremski, ‘Every Image I Make Is the Permission I Was Never Given’
War Still Rages in Ukraine. Photographer Conall Kearney Is There to Document It.
Photographer Elijah Chukwuka Mogoli Captures a Disappearing Brooklyn
Sign up for our newsletter here to get these stories direct to your inbox.
in your life?
