MCM001
Morocco
I have come to know this land: the Dades Valley, the M’Goun Massif, the high plateaus above Agoudal and around the Lakes of Tislit and Isli, the hidden reaches of Bougmez, this web of valleys and summits in the High Atlas. It is a landscape of scoured, striated rock, ochre-red, cream, camel-hair brown. The rivers plunge through sheer canyons fed by the spring snow-melt, or meander through the wide-planted gardens shimmering green with swathes of wheat, silver with fig and poplar trees, dominated by the ruins of once-grand kasbahs.
And Marrakech, ancient city, a lively tangle of narrow streets and alleys sheltered beneath its cinnabar walls, blushing as the day advances. It’s a cacophony of street vendors’ cries, the ring of craftsmen’s tools, the call of the muezzin. At each corner, one turns from tall blank walls to gracefully carved arches to the endearing chaos of the souk. Chiaroscuro Marrakech, a performance in many acts.
I frame all of this in my viewfinder and hold it in my mind’s eye. My real love is the mountains. As the sun comes up behind me above the surrounding ridges, shadows drift into my viewfinder only to disappear as the sun shifts - how swiftly light and shadow change places! Photographing in the early morning light on a December day, cold still, but already sensing a golden warmth easing down from the high slopes, or late afternoon when the sun’s velvet rays appear to turn the rock to ember - then I have a rare feeling of belonging, of being somehow at home in this place, though still firmly connected to the world beyond. The thrall of these majestic mountains and torn valleys instils an urgency to explore further.
Even so, I’m reminded that I am after all a stranger when I see the people who occupy this land and work it: planting and tending their parcels of the earth, watering from the tiny irrigation channels, harvesting their crops, using all the skills passed down through generations to eke out a living. Unlike me, people don’t pause to look up at the sky or sense the power of the mountains: their eyes are turned to the earth and the job in hand. They know its beauty without needing to look. It’s in their hearts, in their moods, in their shared hopes and fears. It is I who enthuse, I who savour the burnishing light. It is I who, just passing through, rest for a moment, to look through a camera lens and press the shutter, to hold on to that brief, precise moment. It is such moments that I hope to share with the readers of this book.
Michael Colley
January 2015
For me the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant, which in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously. In order to ‘give a meaning’ to the world, one has to feel oneself involved in what one frames through the viewfinder. This attitude requires concentration, a discipline of mind, sensitivity and a sense of geometry.
(Henri Cartier-Bresson)
Vietnam
Cuba