Book Review: Morocco by Harry Gruyaert
© Harry Gruyaert / Magnum Photos, Meknes,198, p. 175
Written by Trip Avis
Travel photography is often the peddling of dreams: we see lush, exotic lands splashed across glossy pages of magazines and airline advertisements. However, it presents a complex dynamic. An intimate, often silent agreement must be made between the photographer, usually a foreigner, and the people and environment they capture. In the foreword of his new book Morocco, Belgian photographer Harry Gruyaert ponders: “The moment the shutter clicks can be interpreted, or indeed experienced, as an act of aggression.” This act of photography as a stranger in a foreign land can be alienating, emphasizing the cultural and personal gap between the photographer and the subject. The subject may feel singled out or objectified rather than being seen as a human going about their daily life. The photographer also puts themself on display; their naked curiosity and willingness to intrude on the status quo make them even more visible and distinct against a backdrop of normalcy. Morocco is a testament to Gruyaert’s ability to delicately stride that gossamer line of stranger, familiar, visible, and phantom.
© Harry Gruyaert / Magnum Photos, Erfoud, 1975, p. 79
Some may think the artist needs to blend into the background to take the most engrossing photographs. However, in moments of othering, where Gruyaert’s outsider status is made most prevalent, he captures some of his most striking works. In Erfoud, 1975, he is treated to an unexpected subject. While he’d intended to photograph a woman and a goat, instead, his camera meets a serene sleeping baby, swaddled in candy cane striped fabric that hangs from the mother’s back. The baby’s eyes are softly closed; its little foot hangs daintily out. It is a tender revelation, borne of a cultural tradition of Moroccan women to demur from images. “In fact, the way that people hide their faces gives them great visual power: the physical impact of a presence without a face, reduced to the pure form of a draped and covered body. It’s a different way of being present, with no labels of identity.” Like any seasoned traveler, Gruyaert grapples dexterously with changing plans, turning them to his advantage on the fly. Even when doors of opportunity are closed in his face, he is equanimous, capturing true, unexpected magic in the process.
© Harry Gruyaert / Magnum Photos, Ouarzazate, 1986, p. 83
A sense of nostalgia strongly pervades Gruyaert’s work, but it is not airy and dreamy in the way we often imagine the term; instead, it is hardened and honed—the product of repeat visits and a dogmatic approach to his photographic technique: “The way I work [...] reflects an obsession: the quest to relive a memorable moment in a place I have visited before, a longing to experience it again with even greater intensity.” The Portuguese term Saudade comes to mind. Gruyaert is longing for a moment that is ephemeral, and in the reverential quest to recapture it, he creates something even stronger and more fully realized in the process. The sense of order and continuity, a repetition weaved into the framework of Moroccan culture, allows Gruyaert to hone this perspective. Ouarzazate, 1986 captures that revolving door ephemerality: a familiar scene of a solitary man walking a near-empty street, but it is always a little different. The slight alterations in circumstance breathe new life into something inherently familiar. Though he may never shed his outsider branding, Gruyaert’s pilgrimages allow him to merge more deeply and intimately with his surroundings.
