Nostalgia for the present : ethnography and photography in a Moroccan Berber village / text by David Crawford ; photos by Bart Deseyn with Abdelkrim Bamouh.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Crawford, David, 1965- author.

Contributor:

Deseyn, Bart, photographer.

Bamouh, Abdelkrim, photographer.

Series:

Debates on Islam and society.

Open Access e-Books

Knowledge Unlatched

Debates on Islam and society

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Berbers--Morocco--High Atlas Mountains--History--21st century--Pictorial works.

Berbers.

Documentary photography--Morocco--High Atlas Mountains.

Documentary photography.

High Atlas Mountains (Morocco)--Social life and customs--Pictorial works.

High Atlas Mountains (Morocco).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (145 pages) : illustrations, maps.

Distribution:

[Chicago, IL] : University of Chicago Press

Place of Publication:

[Leiden] : Leiden University Press, [2014]

System Details:

text file

Summary:

Anthropology and photography have been linked since the nineteenth century, but their relationship has never been entirely comfortable--and has grown less so in recent years. Nostalgia for the Present aims to repair that relationship by involving intentional participants in an inclusive conversation; it is the fruit of a collaboration among an ethnographer, a photographer, a group of Moroccan farmers, and Abdelkrim Bamouh--a native intellectual whose deep understanding of rural Morocco made him not merely a translator but a facilitator of the dialogue. The result is an arresting portrait of everyday life in Tagharghist, a contemporary High Atlas village. The pictures are central, and the text built around them creates a dialogical form of visual ethnography. Nostalgia for the Present is both a memorialization of a people and a way of life, and a rich foray into the potential of interdisciplinary collaboration. The photos in this book evoke a sense of nostalgia, a longing, and the words explore the contexts and ambiguities that vitalize it. As the book concludes, nostalgia happens in our present, and is about our future. It is a call from our heart (or our liver, as villagers would say) to attend carefully to something we are leaving, something our gut tells us we ought to cherish and preserve, and bring with us on our inexorable march into the unknown.

Notes:

Abdelkrim Bamouh is a native Moroccan, friend of Bart Deseyn, and assisted with translating between the authors and local Moroccan farmers for this project.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 141-143)

CC BY-NC-ND

Description based on print record, CIP data from the publisher, and e-publication e-publication, viewed on September 24, 2020.

OCLC:

1030822534

Publisher Number:

10.26530/OAPEN_611490