Bruno Barbey - Maroc - 2003

Book exhausted in good condition / very light crease on the flyleaf: cover and interior like new / Bruno Barbey was born in Morocco. He lived until the age of twelve between Rabat, Marrakech and Tangier. More than a simple biographical element, more than an initial clue to unravel the mystery of a discreet photographer, this is a key. He has kept a fascination for this country that he expresses through thirty-five years of photography, which are as many testimonies of what he calls “a Morocco that endures.” “Morocco awakened him, Morocco infused him, Morocco showered him with lights, colors, contrasts. He trained his gaze to reds, yellows, golds, ochres, tawny, shadows and then sands. Of those that unsettled painters, enthralled Delacroix, fascinated Matisse, compelled, in his own confession, to revise his palette from top to bottom,” writes Annick Cojean about him. The photographs of Bruno Barbey offer the view of a contemporary artist on Moroccan reality, which has traversed history while keeping its singularity. Hence this jubilation to wander through the cities of Essaouira, Casablanca or Fez, to yield to the pleasure of colors and textures, to engage in plays of shadows and light in the labyrinth of alleys and architectures. His artistic eye and his closeness to the country and its inhabitants deliver a timeless tableau; texts by Jemia and J.-M.-G. Le Clézio, photos in color.