Description
One must go deep into the medina of Marrakesh to find these artisans’ alleys where metal reigns unchallenged. Beneath a corrugated-iron roof that filters the daylight, blackened armoured doors, covered in chalked numbers, alternate with pinkish-ochre walls; lanterns, grilles and wrought-iron armchairs await buyers outside the workshops. At the centre of the paved alley, in the only true pool of light, a crouching man bends over his moped — an ordinary, absorbed gesture that suddenly gives all this forge-like setting its scale and its life. The light falls at an angle, catches the cobbles, and leaves the rest in a dense half-light where the eye gradually discovers a thousand details: a poster of footballers, a telephone number painted on a door, a second moped parked in the shadow. It is a scene of work without pose or picturesqueness, captured with a respectful distance — the souk as it belongs to itself, when no one is watching.
