Aaron Vincent Elkaim: Jewish Morocco

Photo © Aaron Vincent Elkaim-All Rights Reserved
On the occasion of Passover, I thought of posting an interesting visual-historical-religious photo essay relating to the long Judeo-Muslim history of Morocco by Aaron Vincent Elkaim.

Jewish history in Morocco dates back to over 2000 years, and Jews have lived in the country as a protected minority. Prior to the arrival of the French in 1912, the currency and flag of Morocco carried the star of David, a recognition that it represented a prophet revered by Jew and Muslim (as Dawood) alike. During the Second World War, the king of Morocco famously declared to the Nazis (who wanted a list of Jews) that there were no Jews in Morocco, only Moroccan citizens.

Following the establishment of Israel, most of the Moroccan Jews have left their country of birth for the USA, France, Canada and Israel itself.

Aaron is an emerging documentary photography who initially studied Film and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Manitoba. His work was awarded on numerous occasions and published in newspapers and magazines across Canada.

His photographs in the mellahs of Marrakesh and Essaouira remind me of my own at the synagogues in these two cities last summer, during the Essaouira Gnawa festival.

Clive Evans: Morocco

Timeless Morocco - Images by Clive Evans

Born in England, Clive travels the world (especially Europe) from his homes in Southern France and Ireland. His years of traveling and documenting Europe and its people result in images expressing individuals, their cultures, and their environments--often with a visual twist.

Clive is also a founder member of Lumen, an international photographer's cooperative with members in Norway, France, Switzerland, Ireland, Germany and Estonia.

His website, hosted by Photoshelter, has 20 galleries but I chose the one of Morocco, which usually provides enormous difficulties to street photographers wishing to capture its people. One of the photographs in the gallery (#5) perfectly expresses the reaction of people when a photographer attempts to take their picture. However, in many cases the reaction is not as good-humored.

From looking at Clive's well composed photographs of Chefchaouen, I realized that the slideshow seems to have somewhat washed out the colors of the photographs, since Chefchaouen's blue is not as vivid as I've seen them in others.

Sean Gilligan: Morocco

In my experience, Morocco is one of the most difficult places for people photography. One not only needs the technical skills of photographing quickly and unobtrusively, but also have an enormous reservoir of patience. I think that Sean Gilligan managed to pull it very well with his gallery titled God, King & Country . The title is from the 3rd image of the gallery which shows a mound of dark sand in which the words God, King, Country are inscribed in white.

Sean Gilligan is a photographer based in New York City, whose objectives are to document cultural diversity, unexpected beauty, intimacy, landscape, and individuals personalities. He has a deep connection with Africa and Ireland and has, over the years, been documenting traditional life as it coexists with modern living.

His work has been featured by CNN, Wall Street Journal, Adidas, Fortune, ESPN, Forbes, among others.

His website has been recently updated and apart from his Morocco gallery, features galleries of Paris, Mexico, Namibia and Ireland.

Nacho Hernandez: Children of the Clouds

Nacho Hernandez is a Spanish photographer who takes assignments worldwide, and has easy access to the Southeast Asia and Asia-Pacific regions from his current base in Manila. Nacho graduated from the Washington School of Photography and also holds a MA in International Relations and Development from Georgetown University.

His interest is in international documentary, travel photography and photography with a humanitarian focus. As an example, he produced a long-term project on the Sahrawi people, and which was exhibited at the US Congress in Washington DC. It is this Children of The Clouds which I chose to highlight on TTP.

According to Wikipedia, Hassaniya Arabic speaking tribes, of Arab-Berber and pure Berber/Tuareg heritage, mainly living in Mauritania, Western Sahara southern Morocco, western Algeria, Mali and surrounding territories, form a large part of the population of countries in the area of the Western Sahara.

Western Saharan pro-independence groups have utilized the term Sahrawi to give a their movement a nationalist connotation. Morocco controls most of the territory as its Southern Provinces, but the legality of this is not internationally recognized, and is disputed militarily by the Polisario Front.

Sandra Chandler: Moroccan Impressions

Following her return from our Gnawa Photo Expedition in late June, whose principal objective was to photograph the legendary Gnawa musicians during the 12th Essaouira Music Festival, Sandra immersed herself in working on her Moroccan Impressions, a collection of photographs that are to be shown at Tufenkian on September 3, 2009.

The venue's address is:

Tufenkian Artisan Carpets
515 NW 10th Avenue (in the Pearl District)
Portland, Oregon
503.222.3428 Ext: 105

Sandra is a photographer and interior designer based in San Francisco. She tells us that color, smells and sounds drew her to world travel. Her city's Asian culture first enticed her to China in 1978 when the People’s Republic first opened. She then continued her exploration of Asia by traveling to Bhutan, India, Japan, Singapore, Nepal, Thailand, Tibet, and on to South America and Europe. Her website is here (LINK).

The Travel Photographer blog had a previous post on Sandra here. (LINK)

Larry Larsen: Gnawa Photo Expedition

Photo © Larry Larsen -All Rights Reserved
I organized the Gnawa (or Ganoua) Photo Expedition in late June, which was joined by a number of talented full-time and part time photographers, whose principal objective was to photograph the legendary Gnawa musicians during the 12th Essaouira Music Festival.

Photo © Larry Larsen -All Rights Reserved
This is the fourth of a series of posts which showcase a sample of the participating photographers' work, and it is by Larry Larsen, a Seattle-based artist and photographer. Larry's biography tells us that he was a boilermaker welder for 30 years, but now retired, he's following his true passion in fine art. He learned how to turn on a computer in 2000, began learning Photoshop, and acquired a digital camera and never looked back. He learned that digital photography is very liberating and wide open for experimentation. He has made Photoshop composites and he has played with HDR.

Photo © Larry Larsen -All Rights Reserved
Despite the difficulty of street photography in Morocco, Larry was able, in his unobtrusive way, to make a number of interesting spontaneous photographs, which are on his website. Have a look at his first image in the Morocco series; for those who read Arabic, you'll understand its tongue in cheek humor. For those who don't...ah, well, you'll have to ask Larry.