Postcards from Morocco

2024 - Ongoing

Before becoming the ultimate symbol of vacation memories, the postcard was first used in a context of military and colonial conquest. Originally, images sent from Morocco to France served to assert control over the colonized space and establish a relationship of subordination with the local populations. Over time, military uniforms were replaced by beachwear, but postcards reveal a continuity in the way the gaze is cast. This colonial perspective, though transformed in appearance, maintains the same division: the same metaphorical wall separates colonizers from the indigenous people, just as it now separates tourists from locals.

Most collections of postcards and photographs of Morocco, dating from the late 19th century to the 1990s, belong to antique dealers. Since these objects hold little political significance in French collective memory, their value is limited to nostalgia for collectors. Yet, they are the material of what Ariella Aïsha Azoulay calls a "potential history" that we have the responsibility to uncover. By acquiring them, I reinsert them into the broader conversation on colonization.

These reflections are also personal. I draw on my grandfather's photographic collections—he worked at the Moroccan Ministry of Tourism. Even though he did not interpret these images with the same critical lens I apply today, I wonder what meaning these carefully preserved photographs held for him.