“Perhaps home is not a place but simply a irrevocable condition“, wrote James Baldwin.
I come from a French mother and a Moroccan father. I lived in France, spoke French and Arabic as a child. I spent my summer vacations in Morocco. And I forgot Arabic, the vacations became less and less frequent. My father left, I never saw him again and I didn’t set foot in Morocco for 27 years.
My story with that country and that part of my family is a story that I do not understand, a language and a culture that I have, in great parts, forgotten and yet are present inside me, like entities on the sidelines.
My irrevocable condition.
I went back there in 2014 and then in 2017. These photos were taken in 2017.
So taking pictures has forced me to no longer ignore this dense universe of sensations and emotions secreted on this side of the shore and inaccessible by words.
These images are my erased language.
Pain and solitude, grace and beauty, music and prayers and smells and colors and light and shadows. Laughter and shouts echoing in the streets.
Silences coasted by dark waters.
Absence and presence.
It is alive. It is in me. It is not a place yet it is a part of my home.
