Intersections is a photographic project that reflects on the happy accidents of the explorer, of the quiet joy in stumbling upon beauty in the obscure, a discovery of the sacred in the everyday.
“Intersections is a journey.
It began as an attempt to locate my understanding of an oft-photographed country within an everyday reality beyond the imagined, beyond the cliché. It evolved into a meditation on transition amid the fragile custodianship of tradition. And it became a study of unexpected lyricism in the mundane. This collection of images, shot in the early summer of 2013, embraces an honesty approaching the realm of documentary, an observation of the unnoticed, the imperfect.
Over 23 days, I visited eleven cities and towns, constructing and curating a portrait of contemporary Morocco through my lens. It was a different Morocco than I had imagined, sitting at the Explorers Lounge in downtown Athens with Ambassador El Ansari. Across the Mediterranean, as I travelled through cities with names synonymous with the exotic – Casablanca, Tangier, Fez, Marrakech – I found echoes of the familiar.
By train, bus, grand taxi, and camel, I crossed a different kind of desert, watched the rolls of a different kind of sea, but found a resonant beauty in the pursuit of everyday existence. Visiting popular locations, but within them, making a subject of the ordinary, I aimed to find points where all the diverse elements that I encountered intersect and coexist.
From the north, lush and green, to the endless, arid plains of desert in the south, I explored a country in flux, not only in the throes of its economic development and self-definition, but too, in its diversity of landscape and light. Most of the images were captured by foot, with no map, no plan. Wandering, nomadic, through neighborhoods, communities, mosques and monuments, Intersections was shot on instinct, with only one fixed prime 28 mm lens, maintaining consistency of vision and allowing the viewer one set of eyes for the entire journey. It is a view situated between the wide and the detailed: intimate, yet stark.
The collection is a record of the richness of life within the seemingly banal, an attempt to capture the spirit of a more nuanced Morocco.
The images are exhibited in pairs, demonstrating their relationship and familiarity within and with one another, but highlighting elements in their contrast that would otherwise go unnoticed. It allows the construction of a new narrative, a celebration of discovery in antithesis. The country’s billowing red and green atop a flagpole crowns the upright lines of the public showers on the Plage de Rabat, next to the unsanctified aluminium pole of a Ouarzazate street crossing. A windblown thatch umbrella next to the tourist-thronged Hercules’ Cave, slants towards a grimy canvas counterpart in Marrakech’s Djemaa el Fna, sheltering a magician’s audience. The wanderer is greeted by the view of a lone woman in black crossing a dirt street, a first impression of Merzouga, a transitory welcome, as are the mosaic stairs of the Hotel Atlal in Tangier.
Intersections is a reflection upon the happy accidents of the explorer, of the quiet joy in stumbling upon beauty in the unobvious, a discovery of the sacred in the everyday.”
The project was produced with the generous support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of Morocco in Athens.
