I love sitting back and watching a city going by, its citizens minding their own businesses. It feels like being a silent observer, one of those grey men that Michael Ende wrote about in Momo, just without the cigar and the plan of stealing everyone’s time. Only taking discreet snapshots of what I see.

Photographing in Marrakech wasn’t easy. As a matter of fact I’ve never been an intrusive photographer; perhaps it’s shyness, perhaps it’s a desire of safeguarding other people’s privacy, but I tend to take quick photos of moving individuals, whose semblances will be therefore blurred, rather than asking someone to pose for me. Portraits have never been my thing. In addition to that, I was out and about on a quite dusty and hazy day, with low clouds, something that I don’t really know how to tackle when taking rapid pictures. But, despite my idiosyncrasies and the weather, I left Marrakech with a good view of how this city, and its inhabitants, go about their lives. Here it is.

Kids playing football.

Waiting for clients.

A horse and the baker.

Generating entropy at a junction.

Mates now…

…And in a little while.

Repair shop.

How many men does it take to saw a piece of cloth? One to do the job and three to tell him he’s doing it all wrong.

Grand taxi. I still remember how impressed I was by my neighbour’s Mercedes 200. Perhaps it’s still running around, here, painted beige.

Every time a taxi stops, furious haggling ensues. 

Gare du Marrakech.

Marrakech is not immune to the shopping malls-and-globalisation virus, ill-formed English ads included.

The suburbs give away to thriving gardens and ripe orange trees, where horses and camels roam.

And this is it. I leave Marrakech at the end of my first visit to Africa. Another one, much further south, is in the works. I leave with this image of the snow-capped Atlas mountains. What lies there? And after their white cliffs? I have been in the country barely one day and Morocco is already exerting an incredible pull.

I will be back.