Morocco From The Air
ARTHUS-BERTRAND, YANN
Seen from the sky, Morocco seems to be a vast chain of mountains, gradually lowering to the sea. The country’s rich farmlands are breathtakingly beautiful when viewed from above – abstract canvases painted in deep yellow saffron, while brown fields of wheat combine with the brilliant green of large groves of palm and olive.
The sky over Morocco is of an unusually vivid blue, the mountains are crowned by snow peaks in winter, and the Mediterranean and Atlantic coastlines draw sun worshippers from all of Europe as soon as cold weather strikes the Continent. In Marrakech, all the culture of the south.
Here is a city of a thousand and one nights, its streets teeming by day with magicians, fakirs, and clowns, its luxurious palaces and hotels glistening at night with the multilingual babble of elegant visitors from abroad. In Fez, the intellectual center of the north, are some of the most beautiful Islamic monuments in the world.
But Morocco is changing. The country has become a pioneer in renewable energy, a revolution in progress that can be read in the wind farm near Tangier and the solar power plant Noor in the desert near Ouarzazate, one of the largest in the world. These images reveal a country of contrasts and provide a revealing portrait of modern Morocco.