Best Friends
I met these two girls when I was staying in a small hotel near Boumalne Dades in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco. It was late afternoon and as I walked past a family of women who were harvesting alfalfa for their animals, the girls beckoned to me. They were on the other side of a rapidly moving stream, but they ran downstream to show me the rocks placed as stepping stones.
They were excited to have me visit and “introduced” their mothers who continued to scythe the grass from a postage stamp sized plot of land. They quickly completed their tasks and bundled their harvest into a shawl. The bundles were twice the size of the women and they had to be helped to their feet by pulling on an outstretched hand.
When I asked to photograph them, the girls naturally posed themselves into this charming photo that shows, I think, the intensity of a childhood friendship.
The pose is better than any I could have conjured up. The diagonal between the bundles of alfalfa is dynamic as is the circle of the girl’s arms framing the two little faces. The expression of the girl who shyly closes her eyes is touching.
I have another shot, which is almost as good, but they are standing side by side and both stare into the camera. I like it and printed it rather than this one, because I got a water spot on this negative and couldn’t get rid of it no matter what I did. I couldn’t print this in the darkroom. The spot was on the girl’s face who is staring into the camera. That was the way it went in those days. I would often find that my best negative was ruined by poor reel technique, or a water spot or other damage to my film. I got used to it and learned to work around it. Maybe a better printer could have used this negative, but I couldn’t until the electronic darkroom came into existence.