FULL CIRCLE: Giving Back to Our Portrait Subjects

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Facebook March 27, 2019
​By David Samuel Robbins

On the edge of the Sahara in southeast Morocco lies the dusty, hardscrabble town of Rissani.

Here is a weekly market completely devoid of touristic trappings - a local’s market in the truest sense, a place full of butchers and barbers and blacksmiths, catering to the tough, no-nonsense people that live in this tough, no-nonsense environment.

To say that these people are ambivalent about being photographed would be far too generous - many are openly hostile.

I have been to this market several times and had the good fortune to meet this one particular metalworker, who, very much unlike his colleagues in the adjacent stalls, was openly friendly and inviting. I made an image of him during one visit, and then returned to share it with him on my iPad.

In the interim between my two visits, I found myself wondering about him, his free spirit that could not be crushed by the withering peer pressure of his neighbors. He was a free thinker and an outlier, and despite no bridge of common language between us, I’d like to think we understood each other quite well.

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