Berber Village with Palm Tree
Morocco 1996
We were shown many images from the great photographers our first semester of photography class. I tried to figure out why they were great. Sometimes it seemed to me to be a case of “Because I said so.” from the instructor.
He showed us the street photography of Lee Friedlander who sometimes had a telephone pole bisecting the image. There might not be anything happening, just an empty city intersection taken from behind a telephone pole. I didn’t get it. Our instructor said it was bold. Or I think he did. Friedlander was breaking the rules. Friedlander knew the rules, though. That’s key. You have to know the rules before you can break them. If you break the rules accidentally, well then, your photo stinks.
On this morning, as my daughter and I drove north from the Erg Chebbi toward Fes, we stopped to shoot this typically Moroccan scene: a Berber village built safely on a hill away from the possibility of the danger of a river in full flood. That’s the river…those rocks in front of the palm tree. It’s dry now, but in heavy rain it will flood. Mud houses do not stand up to floods.
I remembered Lee Friedlander when I shot this and decided to place the palm trunk in the place of Friedlander’s telephone pole. To my surprise, it works. Maybe because it is alive, waiting for the rains, growing among the rocks and sand.
See my friend, Ali’s, website: www.adventureswithali.com for ideas for your trip to Morocco.