The Tanneries of Marrakech
In the tanners' quarter by Bab Debbagh, hides are still cured by hand in open pits, with the Atlas on the horizon.
The tanners' gate
The tanneries of Marrakech sit in the north-east corner of the medina, just inside Bab Debbagh — the name means the tanners' gate. The trade has been in this part of the city for centuries, pushed to the edge of the walls for the obvious reason, and it is still worked by hand.
From a rooftop the yard reads as a grid: square and round pits sunk into the ground, some pale, some dark, separated by narrow earth walkways. Unlike a covered souk it is open to the sky, and on a clear day the High Atlas stands along the horizon behind it. The pattern is the first thing a camera notices. The labour is the second.
Lime first, colour later
The work runs in a sequence. The pale pits come first: lime and water, used to loosen hair and flesh from the raw hide. After that the hides are softened, and only then do they reach the dye. Workers move them between pits by hand and by cart, and lay them out across the ground to dry.
It is a working industry, not a museum, and it looks like one — plastic barrels next to stone pits, carts with bicycle wheels, stacks of hides waiting their turn. We wanted both halves of that in the set: the geometry you see from above, and the people and tools you only see when you stand close enough for the pattern to break.
Getting in
Visitors are usually met near the gate by someone offering to show them in, and handed a sprig of mint to hold under the nose. The mint helps less than you would hope. The smell is part of the place, and every account of it is right.
We were there in the early afternoon in January, when the sun is low enough even at midday to throw long shadows across the pits and put some shape into the hides laid out to dry.
What we brought back
A handful of photographs made within about ten minutes and a few hundred metres of each other. One looks across the whole yard to the mountains. Others follow the work: a cart of hides, a row of pits with the tanners walking between them, hides spread across the ground, a tanner drawing water beside a blue barrel at the pits, and a worker hauling hides out of the lime.
