Through the Lens of Time
Photographer Raquel Guiu captures the magic of everyday life in Morocco’s Draa Valley.
At any given moment, there is a good chance Raquel Guiu is travelling somewhere remote, camera in hand, using her lens to capture moments of daily life steeped in a sense of place. When we connect, the Barcelona-based photographer and art director is in Uganda, where she helps lead a nonprofit, but her travels have taken her to Mozambique, Albania, Cuba, India, and beyond.
For a recent photographic study, she traversed the arid and striking landscape of the Draa Valley in southern Morocco. Three road trips took Guiu across the valley, through the smattering of small adobe villages and ancient kasbahs, the warm sand tones only broken up by the occasional lush oasis. In many ways, a visit here is like stepping back in time, to a slower and more traditional way of life ruled by the season and the sun and centuries of Berber culture. “Ultimately, the Draa Valley is the gateway to desert life and its vast palm groves,” Guiu says.
Visits to Morocco are a regular occurrence for the photographer, who loves how the country feels far away despite its proximity to Spain. “I travel to Morocco every year,” she says. “It’s a place that deeply inspires me. The landscapes, the way life unfolds around the desert, and the stunning architecture always draw me back.” Each time she goes, she tries to visit some new part of the country, though the Draa Valley was simply too captivating for just one visit.
The hardest part of the trip, the photographer says, was constantly wanting to stop to take pictures. “There’s a photo opportunity at every turn, and managing that can be tricky.” And while the locals she met were welcoming, they weren’t always comfortable being photographed, a situation Guiu handles with care. “With patience and respect, new photo opportunities always arise,” she says.
From her time in the Draa Valley, Guiu recalls driving along endless desert roads, with nothing but sand in every direction, when she suddenly found herself surrounded by a lush palm grove, spending the night in a 500-year-old kasbah made entirely of earth. Another time, she notes, getting to see rain failing over the dunes was “truly magical.”
In her images, she captures something of this magic—in moments of stillness and the shadows that play across the adobe walls, and the hospitality she experienced at Kasbah des Caïds and Aitisfoul, both tucked in remote villages. Her images are vivid and bright, relaxed and unposed. In each, a sense of quietude and tranquility emanates—the kind that is unique to the desert.
When asked what she hopes viewers will take from looking at her images of the Draa Valley, she says: “The calmness of the desert, the delicate details in everything, and the way human life blends so naturally into this vast, timeless landscape.”
