Waiting for Palms - Urban Landscapes from Morocco and Egypt

Waiting for Palms North Africa, like many Muslim areas, over the last few decades has been hijacked; with violence, terrorism, protests, and war creating an ambience of fear which has maligned the underlying culture. Peter Ydeen recently completed a series of photos “Waiting for Palms”, which lies in contrast to this violence. The series was created along the Nile River in Egypt, from Cairo to Aswan; and in central Morocco from Essaouira through the Atlas Mountains to the Saharan Drâa-Tafilalet regions. Ydeen, primarily an Urban Landscape photographer, found and recorded a world that values an alluring privacy. Barren walls often house fanciful courtyards and behind every burqa is a dream. These dreams are reflected in the stages, which the people create, and where every day they live and act. The landscapes varied from the stark and vivid minimal geometry found in both less populated areas Morocco as well as southern Egypt, to the hazy and chaotic atmospheres of Cairo, Marrakech and Fez. What at first seems drab, the urban landscape transforms into an elegant imposition of engineered spaces, with the pastel hues of the buildings and spaces acting as settings for the intimate worlds where the people become additional pieces of the compositions. Here in Egypt and Morocco, every corner is a painting, and every person seemed perfectly placed in their assigned arrangement. There is a softness and grace at every turn. "Waiting for Palms" is intended to be a reflection this graceful region.