Chefchaouen

My Photo scholarship 2011 entry

Worldwide | Tuesday, November 8, 2011 | flickr photos

I travelled to Morocco one year ago with the certainty that I had to find out how people live there, far away from the vineyards and the southern sea of greenhouses. Attached to my camera I couldn’t stop wondering ¿how does the African woman live? This qestion come to my mind because I couldn´t forget Gerda Taro and all what she meant for the photojournalism in this country during the hard years of civil war, and I thought ¿how would she watch these streets, empty of women?, ¿how would she whatch these villages, devastated by the rain? Therefore, I made a journey to the región of Chefchaouen, and, there I engaged in photographing all women and men who were walking along the roads almost 100 km a day carring some water or firewood on their heads. And I wondered ¿is there anybody waiting for them?

I believe that I was remembering Taro also because she travelled to Spain with the purpose of portray the most advanced women in a age which little had to promise women, and she could’t come back. And she achieved that her spirit kept still alive, after eighty years, in people like me, who are willing to travel, fight and overcome difficulties in order to show the whole world a meaningful and real picture, which helps the global knowledge.

I have always thought that National Geography readers should be people who don’t settle for knowing which is near and around us. Not because we don’t find closeness interesting, but we have already walked it, wondered it and pondered it so many times that we have reached a conclusión. And no pleased with that, we have gone back on it and inquired about it and changed or confirmed our standpoint. I´m speaking of those who cares about the world where we live in.