Sans titre (Foto dal finestrino), an attempt at street photography in movement

An attempt at capturing a reality that felt intimately close, yet frustratingly out of reach, in a moment in time where my existence as a human being was defeated by my role as a tourist, driving through overlooked and somehow unknown towns of Morocco.

Tarmouchte, Morocco. Typically one, of the many, villages that flit by from the windows of countless passing minibusses, shuttling tourists from point A to point B. It never is about reaching those villages living and breathing between the High Atlas mountains, chaotic Marrakech, and the boiling hot Ouarzazate desert during the summer months.

When I travel, it's with the intention of forging connections with the sincere, somewhat remote locales, where the label of 'tourist' fades, where strangers become bonds, and where I introspect and find myself reflected in the 'other'—an 'other' that embraces me more warmly than my own kin, where shop signs are recognisable with unexpected familiarity despite the distance and the foreign alphabet. There, I find encounters that pierce the heart, leaving an indelible mark.

Photographing during a tourist-oriented tour instinctively triggered my longing for coming closer to a reality that felt beyond my reach, while I was confined behind the windows of a rolling minibus. The photographs I took manifest my attempt to break down a transparent barrier that separated me from what was in front of my eyes, yet unreachable and untouchable. While I felt like a fish in a glass bowl, looking out, I was capturing the essence of what I could barely grasp, while I couldn't dismantle any prejudice, any bias that might come from only looking without interacting.

Through a google-maps-street-view navigator approach, I persistently gazed outside, seeking to unravel moments hidden and awaiting into the landscape ahead. Each shot was a quest to capture details, nuances, perfumes even, in one-shot opportunities. While we were running, they were talking, they were living, reaching, buying, discussing, at a human pace. Each shot was an effort to become part of that reality, to immerse myself in the scene, the territory, the encounters I was longing from afar.

Only three rules kept me going during those interminable, hot, driving hours: a blinding sun, a devouring eye, a consumed shutter speed.