Stories from Morocco : In black and white
There is a great yearning for the time of photography using "film" technology. This year, requests for traditional cameras and darkroom tools, including the chemical solution in which the photos are immersed, and darkroom studio equipment, have exceeded all expectations.
This "nostalgia" has not only been observed through emotions and feelings, but has also been translated into numbers. Some companies in the photography industry, particularly Japanese ones, have tried to capitalize on this and support its spread worldwide by providing the necessary tools and encouraging competitions to select the best newly released non-digital images.
The result was recording record sales in films that were literally discontinued in most countries around the world after digital cameras, and then smartphones, invaded all global markets. Because of this invasion, during the last twenty years, the traditional profession of the photographer almost became extinct. After both the poor and the rich used to visit the "photographer" to take pictures of events and administrative photos, dealing with a professional photographer became restricted to those who could afford the cost of renting modern cameras, which equals the price of some family cars. There are also reports of an annual festival being held in some European capitals to exhibit photographs taken in 2023 using traditional darkroom and chemical development techniques that resemble drinking water, and red lighting. This type of festival is likely to revive the market for traditional photography film production, which has become extinct in most countries around the world, after major companies stopped producing it and either declared complete bankruptcy or shifted entirely towards digital camera manufacturing.
In Morocco, the profession of traditional photography was greatly damaged, but on the other hand, the profession of “cameraman” flourished and was taken up by young men, of both sexes, from various social circles. There are those who have made street photography using modern cameras a source of income by displaying pictures on international platforms for acquiring pictures.
Some may be shocked to know that a picture of the Hassan II Mosque may be sold only once on a global image-selling website for a price exceeding four million centimes, provided that some technical conditions are met in the image, including being taken with a professional camera and a lens costing more than ten thousand dirhams.
There are global platforms that encourage Moroccan creators and promote their images, especially those with a tourist theme, such as photographing the blue houses of Chefchaouen, the dunes of Merzouga, snakes and monkeys at Jardin Majorelle in Marrakech, and other images that must be taken from an artistic angle.
These professional images are used in documentary films, and some are acquired by specialized magazines that generously pay for them. This encouragement has led to the evolution of the profession of photographers, instead of it becoming extinct as it did in the early years of the emergence of camera phones.
The old photographers who did not "migrate" to the digital world closed their shops, and some of them remained clinging to a traditional camera or two, treating them like their children, but they found a big problem in finding photography films and traditional materials used in photo development. But it seems now that their profession may come back to life after the world has tired of the silence of digital photos and their coldness above the screen.
It might be appropriate if "someone" in the Ministry of Culture paid attention to this global wave of nostalgia for the days of traditional photographic images, and we hear about a festival or competition to encourage the old photographers... Those of us who were born before all the digital cameras that roam the world today, no one stood in front of them with neatly combed hair and a buttoned-up shirt to take a picture and then return the next day to take it after a long process of development and drying.