The classroom, a blackboard of Moroccan society by Hicham Benohoud

It took Hicham Benohoud thirty-five years to escape his native Marrakech, where he worked as an art teacher for thirteen years. Before leaving for France and devoting himself fully to his love of photography, he immortalized his students in their classrooms between 1994 and 2002. These scenes, sometimes very thoughtful, sometimes more spontaneous, were intended to show the "confinement" of his compatriots, hoping that one day they would "open their eyes" to their condition.

The faces of these children, the positions they adopt to create frames or backgrounds, the fishing lines embodying the ties that are impossible to break free from, reflect for Hicham Benohoud the social tension, alienation, and lack of the notion of the individual—a Western concept—that, according to him, characterize Moroccan society. "These faces all look the same; none stand out. When one model emerges, another immediately comes along to disrupt it; we no longer know what to see or who to see," explains the artist.

Black and white accentuates this uniformity, but it wasn't really chosen. In his early days, Hicham Benohoud bought color film because of its attractive price and the large number of laboratories that existed at the time to develop it. That was until the day the French cultural center in Marrakech, where he sometimes taught, gave him access to its black and white laboratory, giving him the opportunity to take full control of his prints.

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