FirstLook: Casablanca Not the Movie

FirstLook
- Photograph by “Yoriyas” Yassine Alaoui Ismaili
Categories
- Creatives

I love walking the beach in Casablanca. Earlier this year I saw a dog digging a hole into the sand. The scene grabbed my attention, and I began to take a couple of pictures. When a boy rode up on a horse behind me to watch what was happening, I quickly took three steps back, placing the horse in the left of the frame, and made this photograph. To me this photo represents Casablanca—chaotic yet organized at the same time. It is part of my series “Casablanca Not the Movie,” which I began in 2014 as a love letter to the city that has inspired me the most. The group of images show a truthful representation of Casablanca that you won’t get from Hollywood: one of diverse cultures, people, traditions and urban development.

—”Yoriyas” Yassine Alaoui Ismaili
www.yoriyas.com
@yoriyas

Hadrian's Syrians

Written by Charles O. Cecil

Stretching 80 Roman miles across northern England, Hadrian’s Wall took 8,000 men to maintain and defend, among them some 500 Syrian archers. With them came merchants, too, including one Barates, who married a local woman. When she died, he memorialized her on stone, leaving a glimpse of daily life along Hadrian’s Wall.

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The White Olives of Malta

Written and Photographed by Tom Verde

In the Middle Ages, bajda olives—from the Arabic for “white”—were prized on this Mediterranean archipelago, but by the late 20th century they were nearly gone. It took a retired expert in gems and jewels to revive the olives knights once called “Maltese pearls.”

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Now
Tastes

Why Reinvent the Wheel?

Written by Graham Chandler // Illustrated by Ivy Johnson

The wheel may be an all-around symbol of human progress, but how did such a simple invention cause so much controversy?

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History

eL Seed's New Scripts

Interview by Johnny Hanson

Fluid, colorful and often covering buildings, eL Seed’s public installations of “calligrafitti” have won eyes and hearts in 14 countries. Now he’s embracing sculpture and fashion, but when asked what’s the most important thing about his art, he replies, “Meeting people.”

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Creatives
Now

FirstLook: Cairo Cat

Photograph by Lorraine Chittock

Since Pharaonic times, thousands of cats have appeared in Egyptian iconography and literature. Today Cairo, they pad and paw their way everywhere, even staring dow the camer of photographer Lorraine Chittock.

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Creatives

Ambassadors of Art

Written by Piney Kesting // Images Courtesy of CULTURUNNERS

When the Museum of Art at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, hosted “Phantom Punch,” it marked the fourth show in a multi-year, multi-city exhibition tour of the United States by an eclectic group of some two dozen artists from Saudi Arabia, where over the past decade, a once-marginal contemporary art scene has become one of the world’s fastest-growing creative movements. Thought-provoking, socially engaged and at times whimsical and even satirical, the works vary from painting and rubber stamps to sculpture, assemblage, photography, video, calligraphy, performance and installation pieces. All share what one curator calls as “an honest need for explanation, an exploration of the world we live in and a desire to understand.”

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Creatives
Now

The Silent Silk Road Rendezvous of Konye Urgench

Written by Louis Werner

Abandoned for more than 300 years following its eclipse by competing cities, the remnants of a once-flourishing capital of a once-powerful Silk Roads realm remind us of centuries of craftsmanship and scholarship in one of Central Asia’s most intact historical sites.

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History

Iftar Potluck Baltimore

Written by Laila El-Haddad
Photographed by Johnny Hanson

In a suburb of Baltimore, Maryland, 15 families with origins across the world gather in the author’s backyard for iftar, the evening meal breaking the day-long fast during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. It’s an American-style potluck, and each family brings not only food from homelands and traditions, but also stories and recipes. “Iftars are to me very much a party,” says Francesca Pagan, who has prepared an Italian stew of escarole and beans. “Food is one of those things that you do without during the day so you can get spiritually closer to God, but the reward of enjoying it after the sunset takes it to a whole new level.”

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Now
Tastes

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