Morocco: Sahara to the Sea [Hardcover]

Mary Cross (Author, Photographer), Paul Bowles (Preface)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 2000

For three years, photographer Mary Cross travelled throughout Morocco, from the Sahara Desert in the south to the Rif Mountains in the north, visiting large cities, small villages, and the country's little-known, inaccessible regions. Gathered in this volume is a selection of her photographs, which seek to capture Morocco in all its remoteness, beauty and mystery. From mountain chasms to desert oases, from "kasbahs" to "souks", Cross chooses subjects in which history impinges on the present, architecture that gives expression to the country's past, and natural surroundings that offer a continuing commentary on the lives of the people within the landscape.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Photojournalist and essayist Cross (Henry James, St. Martin's, 1993) has created a stunning book that makes you immediately want to visit the exotic Moroccan kingdom. Cross spent three years in Morocco, and she truly captures the essence of the land and its inhabitants. She takes us from the endless sands of the Sahara to the pinnacles of the Atlas Mountains to the bustling cities. The photographs have been keenly edited to exhibit the mysterious beauty of the landscapes juxtaposed with the human portraits that show the everyday life of Morocco's diverse people. The preface is by Paul Bowles, an expatriate in Tangier, while Moroccan writer Tahar Ben Jelloun contributes the introduction. The book has an excellent bibliography and index. A beautiful work for public libraries.
Melinda Stivers Leach, Precision Editorial Svcs., Wondervu, Col.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Mary Cross is also the author and photogapher of Egypt (1991). Her photographs have been exhibited in one-person shows at such sites as Harvard, Princeton, Berkeley, The Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, and Meridian House in Washington, D. C. She lives in Princeton, New Jersy. Paul Bowles is author of The Sheltering Sky and dozens of other celebrated works. Tahar Ben Jelloun is author of a dozen novels, essays, and poems, among them The Blind Angel, The Day of Silence at Tangier, Lowered Eyes, and The Sacred Night.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Abbeville Press; lst ed edition (August 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0789200309
• ISBN-13: 978-0789200303
• Product Dimensions: 12.1 x 9.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,448,649 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Morocco: Sahara to the Sea., July 26, 2001

By 

Daniel Pipes, Middle East Forum, Philadelphia (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Morocco: Sahara to the Sea (Hardcover)

Cross, a photojournalist living in Princeton, New Jersey, roamed Morocco and took home a superb collection of photographs. Her pictures range from the characteristic keyhole arches of the royal palaces to naked chickens hanging in the butcher's shop, and they cover several of Morocco's most picturesque regions. In particular, Cross has an eye for colors, whether in clothing, plants, animals, buildings, or landscape.

But there's something wrong with this postcard-like album, and it's modern life, carefully excised from nearly every picture. Morocco celebrates the non-Western and the old. The two brief forewords by the eminent writers Paul Bowles and Tahar Ben Jelloun set the tone, lauding Olde Morocco ("The beauty of the countryside is never flawed") and implicitly disdaining its modern counterpart. If a photographic collection is to portray reality, however, it has to record the full range of life, not just the exotic and archaic. Only a very few scenes hint at a Morocco that's not timeless: in particular, one picture shows a building in downtown Marrakesh plastered with posters (in English) advertising "Police Action III" and "Platoon Leader." After so many scenes from centuries past, this one feels oddly authentic and even fresh. Had Cross only shown some children in cement schools, commuters in buses, and old men watching television, she would have captured not only the beauty of Morocco but also its current reality.

Middle East Quartely, June 1996