Morocco

Morocco rewards the kind of attention that is willing to be patient. Not the attention of a tourist in a hurry, but the attention of someone who has sat down, ordered something, and decided to stay until the light changes.

This publication is built from three studies made across two Moroccan cities. Tangier first: the port city that has spent centuries being looked at by Europeans and responded by remaining completely itself. A city at the intersection of Arabic, French and Moorish cultures, where a brass plaque marking where Matisse once worked sits on a wall that was ancient when he arrived. Then Dar El Bacha in Marrakech: a historic palace converted into a coffee institution that treats the ritual of a cup of coffee as an argument about what beauty can mean inside a functional space.

The publication moves between these two registers without suggesting they are the same thing. Tangier is a city at street level, an interior world, an evening light. Dar El Bacha is a room inside a city. What they share is a quality that Morocco seems to produce reliably: the sense of a place that has existed long enough to stop needing to explain itself.

The full publication is available to read below. Click to open in full.

The three studies that preceded and informed this publication are in the archive.

• Tangier  ·  The port city, its streets and interiors
• Tangier II  ·  Evening light, the medina and the Atlantic shore
• Dar El Bacha  ·  The coffee palace in Marrakech