Marrakech Time.

My Photo scholarship 2010 entry

Morocco | Monday, August 23, 2010 | 5 photos

I’ve always been interested in writing yet frustrated by the fundamentally abstract nature of language. Given my propensity to abstract, philosophical thought, I have found that literature leads me further away from reality while photography—which works through concrete images that are nevertheless capable of expressing different degrees of ambivalence and ambiguity—always brings me back to reality. I am fascinated by the immediacy with which an image can reveal pockets of reality of which we were unaware, by the potential of even the most mundane image to stir up feelings and memories we thought we had lost forgotten or repressed, to provoke in us an uncanny feeling of recognition when we sense that what we see in a photograph we have, too, lived and suffered once. Every ‘space’ is always already ‘emplaced’ i.e. it has a particular history, a unique atmosphere or mood and a story—indeed, numerous stories—waiting to be told. The story might not be dramatic, profound or memorable; I believe even the most ephemeral, transitory moments leave traces in our unconscious memory, which we later re-imagine as a story. Monet studied the effect of changing light on everyday objects. Similarly, I’m trying to train my eye to see mundane things from an unexpected point of view and, conversely, to see the familiar in the unfamiliar/the exotic. Last summer I spent 10 days in Morocco. I was struck by my peculiar experience of time while I was wandering in the souk. Although every day at the souk is made up of infinite moments of infinite variety, each moment bringing something new and different to see, the souk somehow exists on the margins of time: even the most insignificant event has the aura of a ritual performed over and over again from time immemorial. Last year I was a finalist in this contest. This year I hope to have the chance to learn from my mentor how to supplement my talent for telling stories through images with an excellent technique while photographing that ineffable tension between the ancient and the modern that is Bhutan.