In the dry and arid desert, the presence of palm trees is synonymous with the presence of water. This is the last cluster of palm trees in what was an oasis 15 km from the town of Assa.
Youth emigration is one of the major problems facing the oases of southern Morocco. Hicham, seen here, emigrated to France, and after a year and several difficult and poorly paying jobs, he decided to return to Morocco. To his surprise, no one, including family, encouraged him. Today, Hicham is a fulfilled young man, happy to be in Morocco. He lives in Agadir and works for an association that helps poor and homeless children.
On August 25, 2020, shortly before noon, a fire broke out in the oasis of Tighmert. The fire burned several houses, hundreds of date palms, orchards, vegetable gardens and more than 400 heads of livestock.
Mohammed is part of the 4 families that still live in the village of Ait M'hanned next to the oasis of Tighmert. Previously, the village was home to a hundred families. He explains that because of global warming, lack of work, lack of hospitals and schooling for children, most families have moved to cities like Guelmim and Agadir.
The wells are the innovation that has allowed to recover new and larger desert areas for cultivation. Water, in this way, becomes available on demand, as if it were an unlimited resource. The water level of the water table has dropped drastically in the Tighmert oasis over the last 5 years. Water and its management is the major problem that conditions the future of Moroccan oases, regardless of climatic hazards that become a structural problem to defy.
Anas says he has problems with his family at home. They do not call him by his first name but by saying "the tattooed one". This qualification, which is pejoratively meant, says a lot about the stigmatization of tattooed people in the Moroccan collective imagination, because they are considered criminals, prisoners and dangerous people. He is a Peter-Pan, in the midst of adults, lost in issues beyond his control.
Born in a working-class neighbourhood and raised by a traditional family, Salma has always struggled to be herself. She is a Goth and loves the strange, the enigmatic and the unusual. She presents an ideal of beauty uncommon in Morocco and she particularly appreciates what is considered frightening, worrying or ugly under the standards of society.
Salima's parents think that weightlifting will deform her body and that she will no longer be able to marry the man they wanted for her. She feels that she no longer corresponds to the stereotypical idea and criteria of feminine beauty as desired by men, yet it does not bother her more than that, because it is the body she has always dreamed of. If she questions the man's view on women, she also questions women's view on themselves.
Hajar and Ines are convinced that you have to talk, express yourself and have the courage to dare to say "I am here and yes, I am different, but I live with and among you". They declare that it is their duty as a queer community to assume and take over a space in which to exist. According to them, change will come when the queer community takes control of its own destiny and imposes itself as an active community.
Tattoos mean everything to Alaeddine. His body is his book and his tattoos tell his story. All he has lived good or bad is inked on his skin. « We live only once » he says, he wants to remember the important moments of his life. He states that people in Morocco do not understand him: « They are usually closed-minded and moralistic, they frighten me by the way they look at me and by what they tell me ».
Nasser is fond of the Punk Rock scene and the horror films of the 1980s. He hates conformism and the dominant culture. He does not think that people will ever accept him as he is and that he will always be rejected. He thinks that society is still not ready to accept that people dare to be non-conformist, expressing their own identity. But he keeps a sense of gratitude to the few people who go beyond preconceived ideas and do not make easy judgments based on appearance.
Randa wears make-up and dresses up every day before going out in Tetouan, a city known to be quite conservative. She says she has always been a " weird " child with a lot of imagination, attracted by the dark side, representing herself to the world differently from the others. "I have often been the victim of intimidation and sexual abuse, mainly because of my appearance. She was self-mutilation and suicidal. To fully accept herself, she went through a deep understanding of her unconventional personality. After a long work on herself, she admitted that society will never be a homogenized sphere. She sticks to what she intuitively believes in and has stopped worrying about any kind of external judgment.
Sofia says that imposing her way of being was not so difficult for her because she began to assert herself in a particular style of clothing very early on. However, in Morocco, she feels oppressed by the gaze of people, the street remains a territory where clothing identity remains an issue, difference a provocation.
Amine is a young artist from Marrakech. Together with other creative friends, they make very popular videos that reach hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube. They target taboo, harsh and philosophical subjects such as suicide, appearance, sexuality, reality and fiction in a satirical and funny way.
Mohammed: "As a child, I had a very difficult life, my father died in 1955, it was a woman my family knew who raised me, she had a little money and paid for my schooling. I was an intern in school from 1958 to 1962. In 1963, she didn't have much money left and I had to leave school. When she was still working, she bought me cinema magazines. We only had cinema, there was nothing else during that time, there was no TV or anything, we had TV in 1961. We use to wait impatiently for Saturday and Sunday to go to the cinema star or revival movie theaters. Going to the movies was like going to I don't know where, people wore their best clothes and there were good films and also good actors, not like now. One day, I had picked up a large quantity of cinema magazines and I went to sell them at a bookstore. He didn't give me a good price and I decided to sell them myself, directly, without an intermediary. That's how I got into the business."
Fatima Zohra: "I wanted to study scenography, because I like manual work, but also because I stammered a lot at the time. I did not use to do the oral exams in elementary school and did not read in class. However, I did not study scenography, because I realized after the two years of the core curriculum at ISADAC (Higher Institute of Dramatic Art and Cultural Animation) in Rabat, that when I was on stage, I did not stammer at all. I think because it's another story that I express and not mine, and I liked very much being on stage, so I chose the performance and the stage and became an actress. "
Youssef: "My father was a farmer and when he had paralysis, I had to leave school and start helping him in the farm. In 1983, I became seriously mentally ill and lost my memory for few years, I started going to the sea with friends. Fishing and contemplating the sea made me feel better and I still do it today. Sooner or later, I'll buy a boat and will start fishing. "
Bouchra: "My relationship with clothing is a love story that has developed through the years: since childhood, I was too demanding to choose my clothes and I watched a lot of fashion magazines, Vogues and Burdas. The love of getting dressed has taken a lot of importance in my life until I decided to make it my job. "
El Ghazi: " I have been working on Boulevard Mohammed V in Rabat as a photographer since 1972. I left school at grade 2 or grade 5 because my parents didn't have enough money so I could go to school. When I was younger, I wanted to become a civil servant"
Abdellah: "I am a 'barcassier', I ensure the transport of people between the two banks of the Bouregreg, the crossing of the river which separates Rabat from Salé. Football requires to know powerful people and my family did not have much money. Afterwards, I got injured and could not make a career as a footballer. "
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M’hammed Kilito

Location
Rabat, Morocco
Work
website
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Mentor Program

Moroccan photographer M’hammed Kilito focuses on capturing narratives that help understand the relationship between groups or individuals and their environments by covering issues related to cultural identity, the sociology of work, and climate change.

In 2021, Kilito joined the VII Mentor Program. He was also selected by Ateliers Medicis and the Centre national des arts plastiques (Cnap) to take part in the French national photographic commission “Regards du Grand Paris,” and was designated as north African regional coordinator for the 2022 World Press Photo contest.

In 2020, Kilito was selected by the British Journal of Photography as one of the 18 best emerging photographers from across the globe to watch, was the winner of 6×6 Global Talent by World Press Photo, became a National Geographic Explorer, received The Photography Prize of the Fondation des Treilles and won CAP Prize, the Prize for The Contemporary African Photography. This same year, he co-founded KOZ, a collective of four Moroccan visual artists working on long-term projects and sharing a passion for storytelling.

His work has been shown at festivals and venues, including Sharjah Art Foundation (Sharjah), Tate Modern (London), PhotoESPAÑA Festival (Madrid), Addis Foto Festival (Addis Ababa), Photo Vogue Festival (Milan), and Breda Photo Festival (Breda). His photographs have been featured in magazines and newspapers such as The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The British Journal of Photography, Monopol, L’Express, and El Pais.

Latest updates

“How Climate Change is Destroying the Oases of Morocco”

September 15, 2022

M’hammed Kilito Shortlisted for Leica Oskar Barnack Award

July 20, 2022
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