MOROCCO

Ayt Bou Gmez, High Atlas

“He stayed there for two months, stuck because of snow, in the course of one of those Cendrars-like trips that he’d go off on, one winter when we thought that he was in the Sahara. He brought back a sketchbook that I’d gaze at as I would the images of a magic lantern.” Karin Huet

Abstracts

"(…) Beaubourg was planning an exhibition to pay tribute to earthen architecture. Titouan scored us an official mission: he’d draw the ksours in the South and the kasbahs around the Dadès, and I’d be his assistant. In the eyes of the Moroccan government, this justified our staying in the country for one year. We finished with the ksours and kasbahs in the space of a month.

Our plan was to live, for the rest of the year, in a Berber valley in the High Atlas, the Ait Bou Gmez. These three words designate both the tribe and its territory. 'Ait' means 'the people.' We’d find a room in a village, blend into the landscape, observe, share and transpose the cycle of seasons and agricultural tasks in a book."

Extract from Onze Lunes au Maroc, 2012, Éditions Gallimard