#the moroccans

[sheltiechicago]

"Boumia," from Leila Alaoui's series "The Moroccans."

Leila Alaoui’s Portrait of Morocco

© Leila Alaoui

"Essaouira," from Leila Alaoui's series "The Moroccans."

"Tamesloht," from Leila Alaoui's series "The Moroccans."

[whileiamdying]

Capturing the Stunning Faces of Morocco

MAY 21, 2014 ⦿ 11:05 AM BY JORDAN G. TEICHER

French-Moroccan artist Leila Alaoui has always been fascinated by the rich ethnic and cultural diversity of her native country. Inspired by the aesthetic and approach of Robert Frank’s The Americans and Richard Avedon’s In the American West, she started traveling through Morocco with her portable portrait studio, documenting the people she met along the way. Her ongoing project, “The Moroccans,” is a celebration of her countrymen and heritage. Alaoui’s project is complicated by the fact that Moroccans are particularly apprehensive about being photographed. “Most Moroccans grow up hearing stories of witchcraft and are often afraid of the ‘evil eye.’ It is commonly believed that one can throw a spell at someone by using his or her photograph,” Alaoui said via email. “Moroccans are also tired of being photographed by Westerners as ‘exotic’ subjects and have grown to react aggressively towards anyone who wants to photograph them without permission.”

Undeterred, Alaoui has embarked on about 20 road trips across the country in the last few years, traveling through the Atlas Mountains, the Rif Mountains, the Sahara, and a variety of coastal and inland regions of Morocco including Essaouira, Tangier, and Marrakech. In each location, Alaoui sets up her portable studio in public places, markets, and other private gatherings after spending a few days getting to know the locals. “I believe that being a Moroccan photographer makes people feel a bit more comfortable once they feel they knew me a bit more,” she said.

Alaoui photographs anyone who passes by her studio or asks about her project. She prints a small photo on site with a portable printer and then distributes the photos to all the people she photographs. “Sometimes if I see interesting faces walking by, I run after them and try to convince them to do a photo. But they usually don’t accept,” she said.

Morocco’s geographical diversity gives each region distinct traditions and lifestyles. Part of Alaoui’s intention is to capture some of those characteristics, some of which are disappearing as the country continues to develop. “In most Berber villages, for example, baby girls were given face tattoos so people could recognize to which tribe they belonged. Today, there are very few women with these tattoos,” Alaoui said.

Alaoui’s photographs are on display in the Photomed Festival in Sanary-sur-Mer, France, until June 15.

[impressivepress]

Do You Know that Henri Matisse Actually Came to Morocco?

The first thoughts that come to one’s mind when one thinks of Henri Matisse are France, fauvism, raw shapes and colors, smooth brushstrokes, modern art… But never Morocco! Why not? First, because not many people know that Henri Matisse actually came to Morocco (twice). Second, because not everybody knows Morocco…

When Henri Matisse (1869-1954) first visited Morocco in the winter of 1912, he was really unfortunate. The moment he was installed in the Hotel Villa de France in Tangier, a city in the north of the country, the rain began to fall. He was then obliged to postpone any outdoor activity, and ended up looking through the window. The rain was pouring so heavily for days that Matisse occupied his time by painting a vase of irises in his room. He complained about the weather in a letter to the poetess Gertrude Stein. Later in his trip, the French painter would get the chance to wander around in the old city’s narrow streets, and furthermore in his 1913 second visit to Morocco.

Just as it happened to Eugène Delacroix when he came to North Africa, Matisse found Morocco so different and exotic that he ended up making numerous sketches, drawings and paintings of it, or more precisely, of what he saw in it. For a French citizen who never went on a trip to an Arabian country, Matisse was quiet stroke by the people’s physiognomy and colorful garment, the architecture, the daily outdoor scenes, and routines… And it shows on most of the works from this period (1912-1913). We can see man and women with traditional colorful outfits (jellabah, gandouras, slippers…), sights from a window, cafe’s terraces and much more. It was as if the exuberance and the flamboyancy in the use of colors in all life’s aspects in Morocco suited naturally the pectoral requirements of the fauvism of Matisse.

Matisse didn’t want to depict Morocco as the French orientalists did of North Africa. He did not have a declination for the fantasist scenes of nude women offering themselves to the sight of Arabian men, scenes of grandiose salons and traditional baths… He intended to keep certain objectivity (even if it’s an audacious attribute to use with a fauvist) in the caption of the spirit of Morocco. And he certainly didn’t intend to paint Morocco as he was seeing it. But for me, a Moroccan, the second I saw for the first time one of Matisse paintings of Morocco, without having a clue about his visit to Tangier, I immediately felt my home country’s ambiance. And after further investigation, I discovered that Henri Matisse actually came to Morocco.

As we all know, Matisse intensifies the use of color palettes in most of his works; the only difference in the paintings he made of Morocco is that the final metamorphosis of the original state of people, places and daily life scenes and routines didn’t deviate that much from the country’s atmosphere and lifestyle. We could even dare to declare that the final work had a “Moroccan touch” to it. Even in the artist later canvases, we can see the influence of his two visits to the country. We can find portraits of French women (Laurette, the three sisters…) with traditional Moroccan dresses and turbans… As if Matisse had some kind of nostalgia for Morocco.

Matisse gave a fresh insight into Morocco, and North Africa in general, away from the exotic and fantasist vision of the Orientalists with their harems and baths (Delacroix; Gérôme), which refers more to dream than to reality. Matisse went to meet the people, so close and personal. We can see that clearly through the close-up portraits of people, and the “simplicity” in the caption of people’s daily life and routines, without extravagant artifices. One feels that also in the choice of painting just one single person, instead of a whole crowd of people. It’s a sort of intimacy and objectivity in the approach of this culture, which he have never lived nor experienced before. Though you can find a couple of paintings with a crowd, but they are really rare compared to the “individual” portraits. It’s as if Matisse may have stated: The individual loses its particularity once in the crowd…

Zorah, for instance, is an omnipresent figure in Matisse’s paintings from that period. She was somehow the artist’s favorite model from Morocco. He painted her in different places, positions, and outfits, as if he was trying to caption the essence of that mysterious woman. We are even tempted to wonder once looking to those various canvases : “But who is this Zorah?!” Matisse knew a lot of people. But not all of them had the privilege to be captioned in his work. So if he chose to paint Zorah, it’s because he saw something in her. Nobody will ever solve this mystery. But our consolation is the pleasure we feel in the presence of such enlightening masterpieces.

In this mise en abyme, Matisse presents us with a view of the old city of Tangier. The painting is invaded in blue, the typical color used in the surfaces of buildings in Tangier, along with white, especially in the old part of the city. So much that we are even tempted to call it “Harmony in Blue”… It feels like as if the buildings are emerging from the sea. It’s true that we don’t see much of the city. But a closer look to the scene that the window offers the viewer provides a proof that it is, in fact, an Arabian country. The multiple minarets, the tile roof, the palm tree, and especially, the man riding a donkey… are all significant clues. The two flowerpots attribute a wide depth of field to the frame. Without these pictorial elements, the painting would have seemed much flatter than it actually is. They give a certain charm to the whole scene. The horizon is perceivable only through the difference between the shades of blue (pale blue for the sky). The lines defining the window frame are so irregular that it seems as if the background scene forms one body with the foreground.

The girl depicted in this painting is placed in the corner of what it seems like a room. We can vaguely see the lines that define the intersection between the two walls and the floor in the right bottom. The walls are painted in pale blue. The girl is wearing a red kaftan belted to the waist with a patterned fabric (a traditional outfit that women wear indoors in Morocco), and her hair is covered with a red veil. The garment is covered with yellow and green ornaments. The color of her dress goes along with the red dots on the wall behind her. She is in a sitting position, cross-legged and her hands joined on her lap, a typical way to sit in Morocco and in Arabian countries in general. Her sleeves are rolled up to the elbow area. Moroccan women used to do that for a better mobility when doing indoor tasks and to avoid messing them up. The paint layers are so thin that if we get closer we can distinguish the strings of the canvas. It’s as if Matisse intended to show this girl in a raw way, without hiding entirely the cloth. This feeling is emphasized in the depiction of the girl’s features and the irregular lines that define her body as if to make of all the elements of the canvas one and unique body. The irregular red dots on the wall that evoke the red robe’s color act like stars, especially drawn on that tone of blue. The meaning of the French title is lost in translation. “Mûlatresse” means a girl who is born from a mix-raced couple, black and white.

Here is Zorah, the woman Matisse made many paintings of. She is seen (again) dressed in a pale blue kaftan, with yellow patterns. She is sitting on her legs, a position Muslims go through while praying, with her indistinct hands on her thigh. The laws of perspective are shattered in this painting. It is mostly perceivable through the disposition of the slippers vis-à-vis the whole scene. It’s as if they were added to the canvas without any consideration of the depth of field or any other fundamental law of perspective. The disposition of these slippers is as much fantasist as the presence of the bowl with the three goldfishes (a signature element in many of Matisse’s canvases). Especially on a terrace! But that’s exactly what’s fascinating about this work. As much as it is fantasist as much as it is dreamy and beautiful. One is tempted to say: But what is the goldfish bowl doing there? It seems like as if she is in a contemplating mood, isolated that she is from reality and from the outside world. In fact, no external element of the surrounding is distracting us from contemplating the “essence” of this painting: Zorah, the slippers and the goldfish bowl. It’s like an element of still life genre is added to this “vivid” painting. One hides the slippers and the goldfish bowl, and all the charm and beauty of the painting is varnished. This intrusion resembles the depiction by Tolstoy of the “insignificant” detail of Anna Karenina’s red handbag just a moment before her suicide (It’s not a spoiler. Everybody knows Anna Karenina’s fate!) A triangle of sun rays is seen on the top left, with a thin stripe of the sky. And again as in many of the paintings made of Morocco, shades of blue are dominant in this work.

Now, this is a different painting, with different colors and tones, and with a crowd… This scene is taking place in a Coffeehouse, as indicated in the title. Six men (no women, if you haven’t noticed it yet!) are seen seated in different positions but dressed in the exact outfit: Grey jellabah and white turban. Aligned black arcades are seen in the back of the scene, while the painting is surrounded with a decorated stripe. It makes it look as an illuminated manuscript. It’s as if Matisse wanted to add an artistic Persian touch to his work, art for which he was known to have a deep admiration. This painting captures the typical idleness felt in Moroccans daily life routines, which contrast a lot with the European Occidental constant haste. The anonymous faces and the uniformity of the outfits are meant to capture the nonchalance of Moroccan coffeehouse accustomed visitors.

Matisse’s paintings of Morocco represent a kind of eyesight on an undiscovered world which, for a Moroccan, is something he/she passes by daily. The daily routines imprison our perception and the unfortunate result is that we no longer give its own value to people and things we meet and experience in everyday life. Matisse’s foreign eyesight is somehow a new lens through which a Moroccan, and especially an art admirer, rediscovers the beauty and the treasures of his/her own country. And that’s exactly the effect of great art. It renews one’s perception, and we see people, places, and things as if we are seeing them for the first time. I somehow revisited my own country… So, for that, I would love to sincerely thank you, very dear Henri Matisse.

~ Yahya Bensouda · May 19, 2018.

[impressivepress]

Matisse: Radical Invention 1913-1917 @ MoMA

Culminating with the endlessly re-worked, monumental Bathers by a River (1909-10, 1913 and 1916-17) and by the equally imposing The Moroccans (1915-16), MoMA’s long-due investigation of what can arguably be considered as the most interesting phase in Matisse’s life-long artistic experimentation never actually reaches a proper high point.

Although the allure of the “major” pieces can be instrumental to successful exhibition narratives and dynamics, and notwithstanding the impressive scholarly effort curators John Elderfield and Stephanie D’Alessandro have dedicated to the unlocking of Bathers by a River's intricate history, “Matisse: Radical Invention 1913-1917” doesn’t need to deliver a “Wow” moment. In fact, the exhibition’s breathtaking ride through constant, deliberate and quietly revolutionary artistic development is more likely to leave the visitor agape right from its inception. In my personal experience, the dramatic one-two finale arrived when my senses and intellect were already numbed, and my ability to take in even more invention, intuition and experimentation was almost fading out.  

Although informed about Matisse’s “cubist” period, and a big fan of paintings like The Piano Lesson, Goldfish and Palette or The Rose Marble Table (all at MoMA, respectively 1915-16, 1916 and 1916), I never realized how coherent with the artist’s life-long research and general sensibility this extraordinary moment was. Like others, I had looked at these and similar paintings only through the obfuscating lenses of an impossible comparison with Braque and Picasso’s early cubist work, the shock waves of whose radicality must have surely rocked Matisse's “comfortable armchair” (as he once described his own relaxed brand of poetic fauvism).

The exhibition starts with Three Bathers (1879-82), Matisse’s long-owned Cézanne. Matisse convinced his wife to get rid of family jewelry to purchase this painting; it was a talisman he would hold on for a great part of his career, through thick and thin. Cezanne’s sober composition and well-grounded bodies, stolid in their proportions and reminiscent of Giotto’s placid elegance, are enlivened by vivid texture and color, and “unfolded” by deformations that recognize not only the loose and expressionistic substance of post-Impressionism but also the radical plane fragmentation of Cubism. This painting is juxtaposed with a series of relatively early works, including Matisse’s famous Blue Nude (1907), an aggressively expressionistic portrait in which the sensual presence of African wood sculpture and the graphic abstractions of Gothic painting are reworked in a confrontationally “ugly” figure. Fatma, the Mulatto Woman (1912) lurks from the second room, and introduces the steady development of what Matisse described as construction methods applied to painting. Part of a series of paintings made in Tangiers, Fatma is an elongated vertical canvas, wrapped around the central figure of an Arab prostitute. The head and the feet of the woman are both cut by the upper and lower canvas. Her vest blends in with an indistinct green/teal background with a striking close-up effect that focuses the viewer’s attention on details such as the rich decorations on her chest and sash. Here, Matisse creates a network of construction lines that are completely independent from the anatomy of the subject and yet seem rigorously and logically organized. The line drawn by Fatma’s open veil plunges down to describe a diagonal opening over the geometry of her chest, an armor-like pattern of blues and yellows.

Two years later, these underlying, only occasionally emerging structures begin coming to the fore, sometimes turning into the subject of the painting. View of Notre Dame (1014) is striking in its quasi-absence of subject. The famous cathedral is still discernible, but only survives as a transparent volume delineated by the intersection of many visible and invisible lines. Crossing the vast expanse of grey/blue of the canvas, this network of lines is a rendering of Matisse’s window view in his studio of Quai St.Michel. The perspective can be compared to other “window” paintings to understand how the totality of the optical vision has been worked and reworked, drafted and then systematically deleted in a sort of excavation process that leads to the isolation of delicate and abstracting formal balances. The same trial by error, time-based process is applied to the surprising intense, almost disquieting Portrait of Yvonne Landsberg (1914), one of Matisse’s most uncommon paintings. The reduced palette of dark grays and green/orange accents eliminates every possible distraction. The real protagonist of the portrait is, in fact, the network of scratched curving lines that not only delineates the body of the sitter, but expands it in every possible direction, suggesting streams of pure energy via a very tangible and physical gesture.  

Matisse was stepping here in a dangerous territory, maybe too close to ideas and approaches that he felt were not completely his. A few didactical, almost normative cubist canvases seem to prove this point, but the “real” Matisse is just a few steps away. The poetic tenderness of the drawing and color in Apples (1916), is a wake-up call to a more mature and personal synthesis of skill, style and experimentation. The flat, vibrant planes layered in Composition (1916) predict Matisse’s future collages; the understated elegance of The Rose Marble Table (1916) is a far cry from Cubism, and already emancipated from the literalness of visible structures. Sparse and essential, this painting is a Zen garden of pictorial composition where absence flirts with essence.

The architectural suggestions and geometric abstractions of The Moroccans look dangerously unbalanced. Even the painter’s legendary eye for color harmonization seems at risk in a composition that Matisse, as Gino Severini has noted, created by progressively stripping it down, “as you would prune a tree”. The textural richness and pervasive off-balance feel bring the canvas to the verge of a color and contrast dominated decorativism. Bathers, on the other hand, bears the signs of its interminable execution, a process that spanned from 1913 to 1917, the whole period considered in this exhibition. The historical import of the painting is certainly tremendous, both because the documents of its realization speak eloquently of Matisse’s technique and ideas and because the painter himself pointed it out as one of his most important works. Bathers by a River is without a doubt a repository of creative energy and an art historical document, but it lacks both the spontaneity and virtuosity of other major works. Its uncommonly long gestation -and the wealth of information that it helped gather- are surely part of the reason of its legendary status. The canvas brings us back to Cezanne’s Three Bathers and to the importance that this model had for Matisse. Cezanne’s solidly grounded figures, textural surface and sober composition are here replaced by four faceless standing figures, staged in a rhythmically shifting landscape of wide vertical bands of color and stylized bright green foliage. Matisse kept working on this puzzling composition until the very end, even after he sold it. The exhibition catalog reports how, in the winter of 1917, writer Ameen Rihani described Matisse as still perplexed by the painting, to the point of asking Rihani if he “thought it had anything in it of Cubism”. To this day, Matisse’s confusion permeates through the myriad layers of painting accumulated and removed over an image whose allure mostly resides in the seductive power of its convoluted complexity.

~ Marco Antonini · August 2010.

[alartemagazine]

Capturing Morocco’s fading traditions

Recently, the Sydney Morning Herald named Morocco one of the best destinations worldwide for photographers. From the towers of spices in ancient souks to the red-clay brick of desert towns, according to the Australian newspaper Morocco is all about colour. This image of Morocco as a vibrant colour palette can also be found in Leila Alaoui’s The Moroccans: a photographic series of contemporary life-size portraits in which she aspires to capture Morocco’s rich cultural and ethnic diversity. al.arte. was given the opportunity to talk to the talented artist herself and learn more about this amazing collection of photographs.

[caption id="attachment_7546" align="alignnone" width="690"] Bride of Khamlia, South of Morocco (2014) © Leila Alaoui[/caption]

In 2011, French-Moroccan multimedia artist Leila Alaoui set out on her first road trip to Morocco. Originally, her aim was to do something about Morocco’s fading traditions. “When you travel to Beirut and to other Arab cities that are a bit more developed you feel like everything is very Europeanized. In Morocco, when you go to the countryside it’s still so authentic, but I feel it’s kind of disappearing, so I wanted to do a project on Moroccan heritage”, she explains. Moreover, Alaoui wanted to capture the rich diversity of the country. According to her each region possesses its own uniqueness; “when you compare a mountain region to a desert region, you will find so many contrasts; it’s a different climate, different tribes, the people look different, they dress differently, it’s a totally different way of life.

Now, three years later, Alaoui has gone on more than 20 trips. While she has covered most of her native country, she is yet to explore the sahrawi or desert region in the deep South, a journey she plans to embark on within the coming six months. Prior to setting out Alaoui always tries to find someone she knows in the region to be her local assistant. In order to do her work, she explains, it’s crucial to gain people’s trust. “In Morocco people don’t like photography for two reasons. One is that I think people are tired of Europeans coming and photographing them as if they are exotic objects. And the second reason is that there is a lot of witchcraft and superstition, so if someone takes their picture they might use it for witchcraft. However, if I spend some time with people, and they like me, they might say ok let’s do it. So it’s not easy at all, especially with the women.”

[caption id="attachment_7542" align="alignnone" width="690"] Souk of Tounfite, Middle Atlas (2011) © Leila Alaoui[/caption]

When travelling Alaoui usually stays with the family of her local assistant. To be considered part of the in-group she spends about a week mingling and hanging out with the locals; she eats in their houses and spends hours with them talking politics and listening to their stories and problems. Her Arab roots certainly facilitate the process. “They think I’m a Moroccan living abroad. I can speak Arabic, so they can definitely see I’m Moroccan.” At first Alaoui doesn’t talk about the photography aspect of her project that much, because she knows it will scare people off. She tells them that she is exploring the country and that she is doing a book on Moroccan traditions, as this is what she would ultimately like to bring about with her project.

The photography element only becomes apparent when Alaoui sets up her studio. “In rural Morocco you always have markets once a week in the village where all of the people of the area come to sell their vegetables […] and what I do is, I set the studio up in the middle of the market.” Alaoui usually goes to non-touristic areas where people are not used to seeing strangers, and especially foreigners. Some people know her, because they have seen her around the area, but a lot of people don’t. “I’m kind of the activity of the day, because everyone is like: there is a woman who looks European, but she speaks Arabic and she has a studio there.”

Normally all the kids of the village follow her around and watch her set up her studio. She starts by photographing the kids and gives them printouts of the photos. Once the people notice what Alaoui is doing and that the photos are free, they slowly start to gather around her mobile studio. When she sees someone with an interesting face walking by, she stops the person, and asks if she can take a photograph for her book project. Most people say no, but some people consent.

[caption id="attachment_7541" align="alignnone" width="690"] Souk of Boumia, Middle Atlas (2011) © Leila Alaoui[/caption]

One of Alaoui’s most memorable photographs is the one of the water seller, “it was really a miracle!” as she describes it. Alaoui tells me that she was in a village where it was really hard to find people willing to be photographed. It was cold and she spent a lot of time on the market without taking any good shots. As her camera had little power left she was just about to pack up her studio when out of the blue the water seller showed up. “All of a sudden, I see this guy coming into the studio without saying a word, wanting his picture to be taken. I slowly put my equipment in place and took two photos of him and then he left. He didn’t even wait for me to print the picture, he just left.”

When it comes to photographing women Alaoui maintains a different approach. “There is no way women will want to be photographed out on the street where everyone can see them”, she explains. Therefore, she usually does two photo shoots, one at the marketplace and one during an informal gathering with the women. “What I do is, I buy lots of food and gather all the women of the village, they’ll all be cooking and eating and then some of them agree to be photographed, it goes slowly, but it’s never really easy.”

Alaoui’s photos show that in Morocco traveling from region to region seems more like traveling from country to country. The country’s cultural diversity is manifested in all aspects of life: the language, the clothing, the cuisine, but most of all in the people. With her collection Alaoui tries to capture Morocco’s different cultural identities, especially since nowadays a lot of traditions are disappearing. “One thing that is interesting for example, is that in the Berber villages all the older women have tattoos on their chins. These tattoos are marked at birth, so people know which tribe the woman belongs to, but you don’t see any young women with those tattoos anymore, it’s only the older generation. So these things are part of the disappearing traditions.”

[caption id="attachment_7543" align="alignnone" width="690"] Jemaa El Fnaa (2011) © Leila Alaoui[/caption] [caption id="attachment_7544" align="alignnone" width="690"] Khamlia, South of Morocco (2014) © Leila Alaoui[/caption] [caption id="attachment_7545" align="alignnone" width="690"] Khamlia, South of Morocco (2014) © Leila Alaoui[/caption] The Moroccans will be on display at the next edition of the Photomed Festival in Beirut in January 2015. For all updates on Leila Alaoui’s work, visit the website and sign up for the newsletter.

[sunkentreasurecove]

[socinnovation]

From the series The Moroccans

Alaoui Leila

1982-2016

http://www.bjp-online.com/2016/01/amnesty-photographer-leila-alaoui-killed-in-burkina-faso-al-qaeda-attack/

[futurafrika]

«Art plays an important role in reflecting and questioning our societies» – Leila Alaoui 

Siamo venuti a conoscenza dei lavori di Leila durante l'Expo 2015, dove tre ritratti fotografici della serie "The Moroccans" erano esposti al padiglione del Marocco.

Oggi, condividendo alcune fotografie del progetto, vorremmo ricordare la talentuosa fotografa franco-marocchina, venuta a mancare ieri in seguito alle gravi ferite riportate nell'attentato ad Ouagadougou – capitale del Burkina Faso dove si trovava l'artista per la realizzazione della campagna Amnesty "Il Mio Corpo: I Miei Diritti".

Un pensiero a Leila, e alle vittime dell'attentato.