Rabat – Casablanca’s L’Uzine Gallery is hosting an exhibition of Moroccan photojournalist Mehdy Mariouch, entitled “Snippets of Life,” a series of documentary photographs portraying the daily life of miners in the Middle Atlas and east of Morocco. The exhibition will run until March 20.
“Snippets of Life” may remind viewers of “Germinal,” the classic novel by French author, Emile Zola, which portrays the misery of coal miners in France. However, Mariouch, focused his camera’s lens on very original human stories.
Mariouch’s artwork focuses on a group of miners from Balima or Anjil, the given name of the mining city Ahouli Mibladen, 25 km away from Midelt, nestled in a remote hill located in the Middle Atlas.
400 km away from this “ghostly city,” as Meriouch labeled it; there is Jerrada, a neglected city. Abandoned 15 years ago, it was is the oldest mining site in Africa, 60 km south of Oujda.
Shrouded by the coal and lead, Mariouch’s lens depicts the social status of these miners or “shadow workers,” as he nicknamed them.
“The series was not at the behest of the journalism, neither its aesthetic value nor its beneficial documentary,” Mariouch added.
“[My] lens is considered an eyewitness of concrete excerpts of the miners’ daily life.”
Mariouch graduated from Casablanca’s High School of Fine Art. He first studied plastic arts and graphic design before switching towards photography.
He has contributed to several newspapers and magazines.
