Photographer Sara Benabdallah And The History Of The Medina

Sara Benabdallah was born and raised in the Marrakech Medina, Morocco, in the 1990s. “At the time, we were the only Moroccan family who owned our riad” she says, “all the rest were owned by foreigners.” The rapid change in the Medina since that time looms for Moroccans who grew up in this part of the city, filled with ancient riad buildings, some dating back to the 13th century. Benabdallah, a photographer, has been privy to the rise of tourism in this part of Marrakech, and how it’s morphed the atmosphere of the medina. She recalls the ways the souks have subtly been adapted to appeal to tourists over the last three decades. “When you walk around the medina you see all these doors in the souk, to various shops” she says, “those doors used to be different colors and we would use that color to give direction. You know, instructions — ‘turn left at the green door’, but now every door is the same. It looks like a Disney version of Marrakech.”

Benabdallah grew up living in multiple riads whilst her parents flipped them before renting them out to tourists — “it was like living on a building site!” Living with her family and grandparents in this quickly changing area of Marrakech led to Benabdallah wanting to commemorate its inhabitants, particularly her own family. Her photo series xxx and xxx feature her cousin and grandmother in and around the medina, with Benabdallah’s glitzy American West inspired post-production adding a rhinestone incrusted edge to the scene. Recently, she exhibited these images at the sixth edition of 1-54 Marrakech Contemporary Art Fair. “I brought my grandmother with me to see her own photos” she says, “it was an incredible day.”

Since 2013, 1-54 Art Fair has given a platform to artists in Africa and its diaspora, after half a decade of success in London exhibiting yearly in October at Somerset House, founder Touria el Glaoui decided to establish a yearly outpost of the fair in Marrakech — “welcoming the most incredible audiences and collectors”, she says. “It’s a career-defining experience, just to be exposed to that audience” Benabdallah says of the fair. Benabdallah references a big range of creative disciplines, from fashion to architecture. Some of the first tourists that came to Marrakech’s Medina were artists, photographers and fashion designers — “these were the first tourists that came to the medina”, she says, “so I met Jean Paul Gaultier, Jean Nouvel and Laetitia Fourgeaud young, and their work inspired me.” Here, Benabdallah talks about the changes in the medina and representing her own family in her images.

What was it like growing up in the middle of the medina in Marrakech in the 1990s?

I was born and raised in the medina, in traditional homes. My family have a deep love for Moroccan riads, many of which were abandoned in Marrakech. Some Morrocans were enamored by modern homes and villas in the newer parts of town, so left the medina. The old riads are also very expensive and hard to maintain, some people gave them up. My parents bought and renovated a few riads in the medina when I was little and we would live in them when they did them up, it was like living on a construction site! When the work was done we would rent the riad out to tourists. At the time most of the tourists were photographers and painters, that was my introduction to the art world. We were the only Moroccan family that owned riads in Marrakech at that point and that’s something very special to me, and that infiltrated my work. At age 17 I moved to the US and loved New York, and lived there for about nine years and in 2021, I decided to move back home to Morocco.

How has the medina changed from when you were growing up in the 90s, to when you moved back in 2021?

A lot of Morrocans never stepped foot in the medina. There’s a split in the Moroccan community, some of those who have more means are more interested in a European type of housing you can get in Marrakech. Of course now, the medina has become very gentrified and it’s now very expensive to live there. There is no law to stop foreign people buying up properties in the medina, no rules and no regulations. There are some foreigners who bought historical riads in Marrakech in the 1980s and would remove the original features like the doors and sell them, that was the first thing to go. I see a lot in the medina now this effort to make some of the souks look like what a tourist might expect them to look like, not what they actually are.

Can you give an example?

When you walk around the medina you see all these doors in the souk to various shops. Those doors used to be different colors and we would use that color to give direction, you know, ‘turn left at the green door’ – but now every door is the same. It looks like a Disney version of Marrakech. It happens in Fez too. I love Fez, we have a riad there, it’s a very important city. Maybe a year or so ago, an artist who has been making tea for people in the medina for years told me he was really sad because the city is doing renovations and they think his shop is not touristy enough. They took his shop away.

You can definitely feel the difference between Marrakech now and ten years ago as a tourist. Is there no law that could protect your friend from that?

Unfortunately not.

How different was the type of tourist you used to see in the medina in the 1990s?

We had everyone from the empress of Iran Farah Pahlavi to Jean Paul Gaultier. There was Jean Nouvel and Yves Saint Laurent, these people, how they saw creativity and glamor impacted my photography.

Would you define some of your work as fashion photography? I saw you work with stylists and hair and make up teams. Your photograph No. 5 feels like a fashion image.

I love fashion and I love Moroccan fashion history. I think fashion can be a great tool for storytelling in the art world. No. 5, with the donkey and woman in a knitted outfit, that’s my cousin and I stumbled across an outfit men used to wear in the Atlas Mountains. It’s a fully knitted outfit, it was for the people who would work shoveling the snow in the mountains. You never think of Moroccan fashion when you think of knitting, but it looked so contemporary and modern. I found someone who could make an outfit using the same technique for my cousin to wear in that shot.

You focus on North African women a lot, what are you looking for when you’re searching for a subject?

Many of the women in my photos are family. The woman in No. 1 is my grandmother, I’m interested in women with stories of Marrakech and the medina. The theme for that series was inspired by the astrolabs, created in ancient Greece and refined in the Islamic age – the woman who did this was from Syria. But yet we don’t hear about this woman, and this is a really common thing. There’s also Fatima al-Fihri who was a scholar who built the first and oldest University in the world in Fez, she’s Moroccan. To me she’s the essence of the Moroccan woman, she’s the backbone of her community, society and home.

You exhibited these photos at the 1-54 Art Fair in Marrakech last week and you brought your grandmother to see her photos. What was that experience like?

She was so happy, she couldn’t believe it was her!

1-54 has a lot of credibility as a platform, it’s a career-accelerating place to show. How do you feel about it?

It was so amazing. The 8th of February is a special day in Islam, it’s a very religious day, and then the day after it rained for the first time in over a year. It just felt like such a special time. After my show opened I walked back to my studio for 30 minutes in the rain. I was so just so grateful for it all.

Your production in the Rhinestone Niqab series is so saturated, with lots of references. How do you get all these references into the photo in post production?

I shoot with a Cannon and then I love to add in the stars and photoshop in aspects after. I was inspired by the surrealists, by cowboys, by space and I like that odd contrast of the three. To me, that’s Morocco. There’s so much that’s changed about Morocco. They used to have bamboo shields over the streets that impacted the light and I wanted to have some of that light in my work, so I tried to recreate it.

You know I’m so inspired by cowboy culture and American western culture. I wanted to have these embroideries embellished by rhinestones. And then I had cowboy boots which I had my grandmother wearing! Again, it’s that contrast, which is what Morrocco means to me.