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Departs 03 January 2028
§ 31° 36' N, 7° 54' W — Expedition
THE ROAD OF OLD MEMORY
Morocco — Mauritania
Departs · 03 January 2028 · 31 days
Participants · 8 · Spots remaining 6
Elsewhere, sand is walked. Here, it is breathed. It enters beneath the eyelids, between the teeth, into the crease of the wrist. It does not cover things. It undoes them, one grain at a time, and remakes them a metre further on.
Elsewhere, light illuminates. Here, it cuts. It carves one flank of a dune and leaves the other dark, sharp, without gradation. It stays still for hours. You are the one who moves.
We call it empty, and in this we repeat the oldest mistake: believing that nothing is something to be crossed. It is not. Emptiness here is not the absence of a place. It is a place that never finishes beginning, and for that reason seems not to exist at all.
The same is true of the image. The photographer arrives believing the desert owes him a photograph, a debt to be collected in the first good light. But here nothing is taken. It is returned — a distance respected, a name asked before a face, a camera lowered at the exact moment the frame is already perfect. The Sahara hides nothing. It shows everything, always. And that is precisely why almost no one manages to see it.
An old man arrived on a blue moped, bread tied behind the seat, come to see his nephew in the middle of nothing. The light fell on him inside the tent like a gift already prepared to be stolen. We waited. Later, outside, in the flat light, we asked for his portrait. It was that one, and not the other, that became a true photograph — because it carried the permission inside it, not only the light.
On the last morning I walked alone along a ridge. I saw a figure stop in the first sun — the frame I had been searching for over seven days, arrived at last, whole. I raised the camera. I made it mine only after choosing, for a moment, not to.
The Sahara taught me this. That the best photograph is always born of a decision made before the shutter, not from the shutter itself.
§ 01
Before the road
Long before the desert was divided by modern borders, caravans crossed it as moving villages, carrying salt, gold, books, news, marriages and prayers. A caravan was not a line of animals. It was a system of knowledge: the memory of wells, the reading of stars, the patience to wait when haste would kill. To the caravaneer, every change in stone, every faint depression in the ground, could be an address.
Salt travelled south in heavy slabs, preserving food and sustaining bodies in the heat; gold, grain and manuscripts moved the other way. The road carried both necessity and imagination.
§ 02
Nomadic life: a house made of movement
Among Amazigh and Arab communities of the Sahara, nomadic life has never been a picturesque refusal of settlement. It is a precise response to water, pasture and trade. A camp is a house whose architecture understands departure — woven tents that repair, divide and travel; a place for everything, because disorder becomes expensive when a household must move.
Hospitality is not theatre for visitors. Tea is poured in stages; silence is not discomfort. We will enter these worlds through named hosts and interpreters, never treating a camp as an open-air museum. Portraits will be made only where welcome is unmistakable, and the people who give the journey its meaning will be paid, credited and free to say no.
The dromedary, one hump, is the great companion of the hot desert. Its body is adapted to scarcity — but this does not make it tireless. A good caravan is measured by the condition in which its animals arrive.
§ 03
Our companion, the dromedary
We will not speak of “using” dromedaries as though they were equipment. We will travel beside them, sometimes on foot, sometimes in the saddle, learning their temperaments and the small courtesies that make a caravan possible. They rise in two movements—hindquarters first, then the forelegs—and the rider must lean with the motion rather than resist it. Mounting is done only when the animal is calmly folded on the ground, under the direction of the cameleer. Feet remain clear of the neck and knees; hands hold the saddle grip without wrenching the reins. When the animal stands, the horizon performs a brief and comic revolution. Pride is best packed away with the spare batteries.
The walk is a rolling, lateral rhythm. A relaxed body travels better than a rigid one. We will begin with short sessions, rotate riders, use mounting blocks where possible and walk whenever the terrain, the animal or the rider asks for it. Nobody is obliged to ride. The support vehicles carry heavy baggage, water, medical equipment and power systems; the caravan animals carry only loads agreed by the head cameleer and welfare plan.
Care begins before departure. Saddles and pads are checked for rubbing; feet, skin, appetite, gait and hydration are observed every day. Loads are balanced. Rest and feed are not postponed for a photograph. An animal that is lame, distressed, injured or simply judged unfit does not work. Watering and feeding follow the knowledge of the local team, supported by written welfare standards and veterinary advice. We will never separate a dramatic silhouette from the living creature that makes it. The dromedary will be our companion in the frame because it has first been our companion in fact.
§ 04
The photographic workshop
This is a workshop in attention. We will study directional light where it becomes most articulate: in a doorway, under a woven awning, between two earthen walls, across the cheek of a person who has forgotten the camera for an instant. The souk will teach us that light is never merely illumination; it is traffic, dust, reflection, interruption and permission. We will work in pairs, one photographing and one watching the life around the frame.
The candid portrait will be approached as a relationship rather than a theft. “Candid” means unforced, not unconsented. We will learn to lower the camera, meet a gaze, ask through words or gesture, and accept refusal without bargaining. Children will be photographed only with a parent or guardian’s explicit permission. The strongest portrait may arrive after the camera has been put away and trust has been allowed to begin.
At dusk we will follow the long shadows of the caravan across the dunes, watching gold turn to copper, violet and blue. At night we will work with tripods and restrained light, protecting darkness rather than flooding it. Every day ends with an edit: not a harvest of hundreds, but a small sequence in which image, caption and memory agree. By the Atlantic coast of Mauritania, each participant will have formed an essay of twelve to eighteen photographs.
§ 05
The places before us
We begin at Ouarzazate, our meeting point. From there the road climbs briefly toward Aït Ben Haddou, the citadel of earth and light where for centuries the great caravans of salt departed. It continues through the valleys of the Atlas and the palm country of the Drâa: Skoura, Agdz, Zagora and Tamegroute, places where irrigation, clay architecture and manuscript traditions make visible the long negotiation between water and heat. At M’Hamid the paved road loosens its authority, and it is here that the school of the camel drivers begins. Erg Chigaga and the Iriqui basin introduce the great grammar of dune, stone and mirage.
Then the journey turns west. The Atlantic enters the desert at Dakhla, giving the horizon another kind of brightness. Beyond the border lies Mauritania: Nouadhibou, Choum, Chinguetti, Ouadane, Terjit and Nouakchott. Chinguetti carries its libraries behind stone walls, fragile and tenacious, a living inheritance of desert scholarship. The expedition closes on this Atlantic shore, in the company of the people, libraries and landscapes that have carried the old road’s memory forward.
§ 06
The longest train of the world
Elsewhere, a train is length divided by minutes. Here, it is length that refuses to be divided. Two and a half kilometres of ore, two hundred wagons, three locomotives pulling what no single word can hold. It does not pass. It happens, for half an hour, like weather.
Elsewhere, iron is a material. Here, it is a colour. It coats the hands, the lens cloth, the inside of the nose. By the third hour, it no longer feels like dirt. It feels like the desert’s other skin.
Elsewhere, cold and heat take turns politely. Here, they collide. Forty-five degrees at noon on open ore. Near freezing before dawn, on the same open ore, with nothing between the body and the sky.
We call it a train, and repeat a small mistake. A train serves a schedule. This one serves none. It leaves when it is full, arrives when it arrives, and the waiting at Choum — a station without a platform — is not a delay. It is the desert’s own way of setting the terms.
Somewhere past Choum, an old man riding home to Zouérat shared his tea without being asked. He had made this crossing more times than he could count, for reasons that had nothing to do with the view. When I raised the camera, he did not pose and did not turn away. He simply kept talking, as if the camera were one more piece of cargo the train happened to be carrying that day.
That photograph is not the best one from the crossing. But it is the only one I still remember without looking at it.
The desert taught me something on that train it had not taught me on any dune. That some journeys are not made to produce an image. They are made, first, to be survived — and the image, if it comes, comes only afterward, as a kind of receipt.
§ 07
The desert’s invisible company
The desert has always been inhabited twice: by bodies and by explanations.
In Amazigh, Arab and wider Saharan traditions, stories of jinn, saints, baraka, haunted wells and presences in the wind are living cultural materials. They are not quaint debris from an older world, nor decorative shadows to be placed behind a Western traveller. They belong to moral geographies: accounts of danger, blessing, trespass, memory and the proper conduct of a guest. A well may be feared because history has gathered around it. A saint’s resting place may organize the affections of a community. Baraka—blessing, grace, a beneficent spiritual force—may be spoken of in relation to people, lineages, places or acts. The jinn occupy a creation parallel to the human one, invoked differently across families, regions and degrees of belief.
We will listen when local narrators choose to speak, and we will accept the boundaries they place around a story. Some things may be told but not recorded; some places may be visited but not photographed; some names may be withheld. Translation and honoraria are part of the workshop’s ethics. We will not stage ceremonies, ask anyone to perform belief, trespass near a shrine or turn uncertainty into a marketing device.
The desert also produces apparitions that belong to physics: inferior mirages trembling above hot ground, halos around the moon, zodiacal light rising faintly after dusk, airglow, dust veils and horizons displaced by refraction. The distinction between atmospheric event and spiritual account will be kept clear without asking one to humiliate the other. A photograph can hold both the measurable and the mysterious, provided its caption is honest. In this landscape, explanation does not abolish wonder. It gives wonder more than one room in which to live.
At night, when the camp has settled and the animals have stopped shifting against their tethers, the wind may touch the tent like a hand trying to remember the door. We will not rush to name it. The desert’s invisible company begins, perhaps, in that discipline: the willingness to notice without immediately possessing.
§ 08
After the last frame
A caravan leaves little architecture behind. A circle in the sand, a cold place where the fire was, tracks erased by the next wind. Photography is more stubborn. It travels onward and can detach a face from its name, a ritual from its meaning, an animal from its labour. Our final responsibility begins after the journey: careful captions, consent honoured, sensitive coordinates withheld, promised prints returned, and stories credited to those who carried them.
The road from Ouarzazate to the Mauritanian Atlantic is made of earth in many forms—wall, dust, dune, ink, threshold. We will follow it with cameras, but the camera will not be our passport to everything. Some doors will open; some will remain beautifully closed. Between them walks the dromedary, patient and particular, carrying less of our luggage than our imagination. We will try to deserve its pace.
§ What You Will Learn
What You Will Learn
A photograph of a tent may describe its shape and miss everything that makes it a home. To understand where to stand, we must first understand something of how people enter, sit, work and receive a guest. Along this journey, photographic learning will begin in that attention to the life around the frame.
Listening before photographing
With our hosts and interpreters, you will practise approaching portraits through conversation. We will learn to recognise an invitation, explain an intention and accept the limits of what someone wishes to share.
An unforced gesture can emerge within an agreed encounter. You will work with that possibility, allowing people to continue what they are doing and finding a camera distance that preserves the relationship. Notes on names, words and circumstances will accompany the images from the beginning.
The light of daily life
Doorways, woven shade and the spaces between earthen walls will become practical lessons in directional light. We will study how a face receives illumination, how bright ground fills a shadow and how the background changes when the camera moves.
You will use exposure, depth of field and focal length to hold a person within their surroundings. In markets and other active spaces, anticipation and shutter speed will help organise movement without losing the life that makes the scene worth photographing.
The caravan in the landscape
We will work with the rhythm of people and dromedaries moving through open ground. You will consider horizon, spacing and the direction of travel, learning when a silhouette describes the encounter and when proximity reveals more.
The animals’ pace and the handlers’ judgement will shape our opportunities. We will photograph their presence and their work with attention to the details that make a caravan possible, alongside its larger passage through the landscape.
At dusk and during night sessions, tripod technique, manual focus and careful exposure will help us work with the available light while retaining the character of darkness.
What the photographs carry home
The daily edit will connect portraits, details, places and the intervals of travel. You will practise building a short sequence in which images and captions agree, distinguishing a documented observation from an interpretation.
We will also consider what should remain private, how promised photographs are returned and how the people who contributed to the work are acknowledged. The final essay should preserve the particular encounters of the journey, carrying their context as carefully as their appearance.
§ The Itinerary
The Itinerary
§ Phase 01
Morocco
Ouarzazate, the meeting point
The journey begins in Ouarzazate, reached directly via its own international airport. If your flight brings you instead to Marrakech, Casablanca, Tangier or another Moroccan airport, our team takes care of your transfer to Ouarzazate.
Aït Ben Haddou, then south by 4x4 toward M'Hamid
First stop: the kasbah of Aït Ben Haddou, the citadel of earth and light where for centuries the great caravans of salt departed. Cameras stay packed for the first walk. From here the road descends toward the Sahara, in the direction of M'Hamid.
Skoura and Agdz, the architecture of water
In the palmery of Skoura, water moves mostly out of sight — channels, roots, cultivated shade reveal a hidden architecture beneath the visible one. The road continues toward Agdz, where stone changes colour entering the Drâa Valley: fortified villages appear and withdraw behind bends in the road.
Zagora and Tamegroute
The souk at Zagora is a school of moving light. In the afternoon, at Tamegroute, green-glazed pottery, clay streets and manuscript traditions bring hand and memory together.
M'Hamid, where the road thins
We meet the caravan team and the dromedaries, inspect saddles and learn the first movements of mounting and dismounting. We do not ride yet.
The camel drivers' school
We learn to lead the dromedary, to trust its stride — the small daily gestures that make a caravan possible.
The camel drivers' school, put to the test
A last day of preparation: short rides in the saddle around M'Hamid, still without the weight of the true crossing, to arrive ready for the day ahead.
The first caravan morning
The first of three days on dromedary back, in the true crossing. We depart mostly on foot, with short turns in the saddle under instruction.
One camera, one lens
The second day in the saddle. The day's discipline is severe and liberating: one body, one lens, no frantic changing of equipment.
Erg Chigaga
The third and last day in the saddle. The dunes rise larger before dawn; we climb quietly and photograph the first edge of sun travelling along the ridges.
Iriqui and the mirage
Support vehicles carry us across the dry basin of Iriqui. Heat and distance disturb the horizon.
Guelmim, a change of direction
The caravan phase closes and the road turns west.
South to Laâyoune
A long transfer teaches the photography of distance.
The Atlantic Sahara, toward Dakhla
The road continues toward Dakhla. The ocean is first felt as light before it is seen as water.
Dakhla, a day of repair
We sleep, wash clothes, check health, clean sensors and verify the archive — the last Moroccan day before the border.
§ Phase 02
Mauritania
Guerguerat, the threshold
The border between Morocco and Mauritania: a kilometre of no-man's land. Arrival in Nouadhibou, on the Mauritanian Atlantic.
Nouadhibou, review
Desert and industry meet near the sea — rust, salt, wind, painted surfaces. We rest and check our equipment.
Transfer to Choum
By 4x4 into the interior, to Choum, a small railway outpost near the Western Sahara border. We wait for the train — it has no fixed schedule, it arrives when it is loaded.
The iron-ore train
We ride the open wagons, seated on the ore, for the Choum–Nouadhibou stretch: twelve to sixteen hours on the longest train in the world. The day begins hot and ends frozen.
Nouadhibou, a day of recovery
We sleep, wash, check bodies and sensors coated in iron dust. We review the day's photographic work.
The road to Chinguetti
The transfer into the Adrar is long; the land slowly gathers stone around itself. Approaching Chinguetti, the old town appears not as an isolated relic but as a compact answer to heat, wind, faith and scholarship.
Chinguetti and the pages of sand
Stone lanes lead toward libraries whose manuscripts have survived through family care.
Ouadane and the Eye of the Sahara
We move through the plateau country toward Ouadane, Mauritania's most remote town, and beyond it the Richat Structure — a design of concentric rings that only from above reveals itself whole.
Terjit
The oasis set within a gorge, sheltered from the sun on three sides, where a spring has flowed for centuries.
Return to Nouakchott
The capital receives us with traffic, colour and the quickening of time. Equipment and health are reviewed.
Banc d'Arguin, the Imraguen
A boat trip among the Imraguen fishing villages, sail-powered boats and the great tidal bird colonies of the Atlantic coast.
Nouakchott, the fishing port
Port de Pêche: hundreds of painted pirogues, the day's catch, the ocean at the edge of the desert.
Individual tutorials
A free day for review, one-to-one sessions, unfinished frames.
The final edit
Each participant reduces the journey to twelve to eighteen images. Captions are checked for names, places and permissions.
The closing salon
A projection of each participant's sequence. We speak of what will be returned to hosts and what will remain private.
Departure
Transfer to the airport and return flight from Nouakchott.
§ 06
Accommodation
Our meeting point is Ouarzazate, reached directly by its own international airport. If your flight brings you instead to Marrakech, Casablanca, Tangier or another Moroccan airport, our team still takes care of your transfer here.
From Ouarzazate, a first stop takes us to Aït Ben Haddou — the jewel of the pre-desert, the citadel of earth and light that for centuries watched the great salt caravans depart. Time to see it, to photograph it, then the road turns south through Zagora, on to M’Hamid, at the true edge of the inhabited world.
It is at M’Hamid that the school of the camel drivers begins. In a traditional setting, we prepare for the expedition, check our equipment, and learn everything about our extraordinary travelling companion: the dromedary, the ancient creature that will carry us into the enchantment of the Sahara, as it has carried travellers since the beginning of time.
Once we have become confident riders, the caravan departs. A first short stage leads us to the Titanic Hotel, allowing us to find our rhythm in the real desert, to grow accustomed to the sand, and to understand that the great crossing has finally begun.
Then: dromedaries, camps, star-filled nights, dunes upon dunes, sand upon sand, rock, silence, and desert without end. For days, we move through a world reduced to light, wind, shadow, and the slow, hypnotic pace of the caravan. At a discreet distance, our motorised support caravan accompanies us: medical assistance, security, and fully equipped desert vehicles.
Beyond the border, Mauritania awaits. After the desert crossing, and a day aboard the world's longest train from Choum to Nouadhibou, the road takes us into the Mauritanian Adrar — Chinguetti, its centuries-old libraries, Ouadane and the Eye of the Sahara — to the oasis of Terjit, set within a gorge sheltered from the sun. The journey closes in Nouakchott, the capital, on the Atlantic: the fishing harbour, the painted pirogues, and the slow return to a civilised world whose existence, perhaps, I hope you will have forgotten.
§ Photo Gear
Photo Gear
Sahara sand never announces itself. You only notice it once it is already inside. It is the most patient enemy a camera can meet, and the caravan has its own laws for keeping it at bay.
This is not beach sand. It is a powder finer than talc, lifted by the smallest breath of wind, drawn toward anything that moves: a zoom ring, a shutter curtain, a zipper left open one breath too long. Lenses are changed only once, inside the vehicle, back turned to the wind — never among the dunes, never with bare hands in the open air. On the dromedary's back, anything left hanging free becomes a small hammer: the animal's roll throws it against itself with every step. The camera stays close to the chest, short strap, never swinging loose. And the dry cold of dawn, after a day near twenty degrees, drains a battery faster than any European winter — the body is the warmest place in the desert.
A hard case, on a dromedary's back, is a promise of breakage: edges that bruise the animal, corners that catch on rope, a weight that shifts becomes a weight that falls. Here, everything travels soft — wrapped in cloth, sealed in a padded pouch, tied low and close to the withers, where the animal's stride is felt the least. The rest — the second body, the spare lens, the drives for the evening backup — follows in the motorised support caravan, never more than a glance away. Only what the next hour of walking truly needs climbs onto the dromedary.
The essentials
- A camera body kept close to the chest, never dangling from an anonymous strap
- A wide angle, for the caravan silhouetted against the dune and the low doorways of the kasbahs
- A short telephoto, for the portrait made at a human distance, never a stolen one
- A lightweight tripod, for the blue hour above the tents and the stars over Erg Chigaga
- A lens hood or a simple cloth, always within reach, against a sudden gust of sand
- Spare batteries carried against the body, where the cold arrives last
- Memory cards in duplicate, and a drive for the evening backup, entrusted to the support vehicle
- A blower and a soft brush, used before every lens change — never after
- Thin, touchscreen-capable photography gloves, such as DIRTY RIGGER, for the coldest hour before dawn
- ZIPLOCK bags, in generous number, sealed again each time they are opened
- A soft pouch for everything that rides the saddle, a hard case only for what stays in the vehicle
What we bring
Behind every photographer in the desert travels another camera: Luca's own, and with it a whole nomadic studio hidden in the support vehicles' trunks. There are the SINARr view cameras, the 4x5" and the great 20x25" — a format few have ever seen leave a studio, set up here on a tripod amid the dunes, its ground glass turned upside down to gather a light the digital sensor will never quite tell the same way. There is the Fuji GX617 panoramic, its 6x17 centimetre negative built for a horizon that fits whole in no other format. These are not on display: they are here to be tried, asked for, held for an entire afternoon if the light deserves it.
There are the LEE filters and matte boxes, a complete set covering graduated density, solid density and polarisers — for those who arrive without their own kit, or simply wish to compare one glass against another under the same sky. There are the SEKONIC light meters, for those who have learned to trust measured light over the light guessed on a screen, and alongside them the SEKONIC colour meter, to read with precision the colour temperature of a dawn that changes minute by minute — something the eye, in the desert, always tells itself a little differently from how it truly is. And there are hands: ours, ready to solve a stubborn mount, a screw that will not turn, a fitting that looked universal in the catalogue and never quite is in the desert.
All of this travels with us not for the sake of a complete inventory, but because a photographic project, at the moment it is born, does not always match the equipment carried from home. If your work asks for something unusual — a different format, a rare accessory, a lens you do not own — say so before departure: the Sahara caravan has an almost infinite patience, but the dromedary's saddle does not, and what is unplanned needs to be arranged in time, never improvised on the sand.
§ Personal Gear
Personal Gear
Thirty-two days between the High Atlas and the Mauritanian Atlantic, on foot, by 4x4 and on dromedary back. The Sahara asks for two climates within the same day: by day the sun steals the air, by night the dry cold gives it back frozen.
January nights among the dunes of M’Hamid and Erg Chigaga often fall to between three and six degrees; days can reach twenty. Your own layers are what carries you through that swing, alongside the warm bedding we provide at camp.
What you bring
What we buy together
What we bring for you
Everything else travels in the motorised support caravan: a local SIM card, and a loan phone if needed; a satellite locator beacon and an emergency flare launcher; a walkie-talkie; a first-aid kit; an envelope of local currency; a laminated emergency sheet; a compact phrasebook; protective document pouches; and your own printed copy of our unique guide — all packed in a waterproof expedition dry bag.
§ The Light Map
The Light Map
In the desert, light does not simply arrive: it makes an entrance; from Aït Ben Haddou to Ouarzazate and M’Hamid, the light of southern Morocco will be clear, low and golden, sculpting the kasbahs and setting the earth aglow with copper; crossing the Sahara towards Mauritania, it will become broader and more silent—white at midday and amber at sunset, when the dunes cast deep shadows like folds of fabric—and along the Atlantic edge and the Adrar, it will grow dustier and more suspended, filtered through the harmattan, transforming villages, tracks and horizons into elemental apparitions, almost beyond time.
The journey begins on 3 January 2028, in the short days of the northern winter. Around Aït Ben Haddou, sunrise falls near 08:27 and sunset near 18:40, on Morocco’s GMT+1 clock; around M’Hamid and Erg Chigaga (12–16 January), near 08:18 and 18:45. On the Atlantic at Dakhla, on the same clock but much farther west, the sun rises near 08:47 and sets near 19:40. Mauritania keeps a clock one hour behind: sunrise at Nouadhibou is around 07:47, at Chinguetti around 07:27 and in Nouakchott around 07:38, with sunset between 18:35 and 18:55. The working day lasts between ten and eleven and a half hours.
The moon is waxing as we leave Ouarzazate, full on 12 January as we reach M’Hamid and the dunes, and wanes to last quarter on 18 January on the Atlantic road; at Erg Chigaga the stars have the first hours of the night before moonrise. New moon falls on 26 January, and the nights at Chinguetti and Ouadane are among the darkest of the journey. The same new moon is expected to open the month of Ramadan, around 27 or 28 January depending on the sighting: in Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania, daily life moves towards the evening, and we will adapt our rhythm to it.
January is the cool season of the Sahara. In the Atlas and around Ouarzazate, nights can drop to around 0 °C while days reach 15–18 °C; in the dunes, nights near freezing follow days around 20 °C. The Atlantic coast is mild and windy, around 15–23 °C. In the Adrar, days are warm and nights sharp, roughly 10–27 °C; Nouakchott is milder, around 15–28 °C. These are seasonal ranges, not a forecast.
§ Safety & Accessibility
Safety & Accessibility
A long journey asks us to pay attention to one another. Tell me when you are tired, uncomfortable or uncertain about the day ahead. A concern is easier to address while it is still small, and the pace of another traveller should never prevent you from speaking about your own needs.
Frontiers and military checkpoints
Border crossings and security checks require impeccable conduct from every member of the group. Remain calm, courteous and fully cooperative. Keep your passport and the documents requested for the crossing accessible, and allow our local guide to lead the conversation. Answer questions addressed to you clearly and truthfully, following the officers’ instructions.
Before approaching a checkpoint, put cameras away in their bags. Do not photograph or film border facilities, military personnel, police, security installations or the inspection itself, including with a phone. Stay with the group and do not leave the vehicle, approach an officer or reach for equipment without first making your intention clear and following instructions. Avoid jokes about security, arguments and gestures that could be misunderstood. If you do not understand a request, ask the guide to clarify it.
Staying with the route
In remote and border areas, an apparently empty stretch of ground is not an invitation to wander. Remain on the route identified by the local team and within the agreed working area. Do not follow an unmarked track, approach military infrastructure or pick up unfamiliar objects. Landmines and unexploded ordnance remain a concern in parts of the Western Sahara–Mauritania border region.
Before each outing, make sure you understand where the group will meet and how to contact the team. Mobile reception cannot be assumed throughout the journey. Any wish to work farther away should be discussed before you leave the group.
Walking and travelling with the caravan
Loose sand, uneven ground and repeated entry into vehicles can be tiring, particularly with camera equipment. Wear supportive closed footwear and carry only what you need for the session. Stop walking before raising the camera, and choose a stable position before concentrating on the frame.
Riding a dromedary is optional. Mount and dismount only under the handler’s direction, and tell the team immediately if the movement causes pain or discomfort. Walking, riding and support-vehicle arrangements need to be discussed in relation to each participant’s abilities and the particular stage; they should not be assumed interchangeable everywhere.
Heat, rest and individual needs
Keep drinking water accessible, use sun protection and clothing suited to prolonged exposure, and take the planned rest periods. Report unusual weakness, dizziness or other symptoms promptly; confusion, collapse or difficulty remaining alert require urgent medical help. Remote settings can make access to treatment slow.
Before booking, discuss mobility requirements, health conditions and any concerns about heat, riding or long periods on the road with us. Seek individual travel-health advice in good time. We can examine the demands of the actual route together, including accommodation and sanitary facilities, rather than assume that every stop offers the same level of access. Travel insurance covering the destinations, activities and possible medical evacuation is strongly recommended.
§ Travel Conditions
Travel Conditions
This journey combines road transfers with a slower caravan section, moving from Ouarzazate through southern Morocco and onward to Mauritania.
Ouarzazate is our meeting point, reached directly by its own international airport. If your flight brings you to Marrakech, Casablanca, Tangier or another Moroccan airport, our team takes care of your onward transfer to Ouarzazate.
Road transport carries the group between towns and regional bases, with a first stop at Aït Ben Haddou before the road turns south. During the desert section around M’Hamid and Erg Chigaga, we travel with a local caravan team, mainly on foot, with opportunities to ride the dromedaries for those who wish. The crossing of the Iriqui basin brings us back to the road journey toward the Atlantic, through Guelmim, Laâyoune and Dakhla, before the border crossing into Mauritania.
From Nouadhibou, a transfer to Choum and a full day aboard the iron-ore train — the longest train in the world — form the heart of the Mauritanian section, before the programme continues into the Adrar and closes on the Atlantic coast at Nouakchott, the capital. Pre-departure information will set out the meeting point, transport arrangements for each stage, and luggage allowances.
§ After the Journey
After the Journey
After leaving the caravan road between Ouarzazate and Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania, with sand, memory and human traces still unsettled within the work, the images call for the companions who travelled its older script alongside us.
I did not include six months of post-workshop contact by chance, nor as a simple service.
Many years ago, I was teaching an online course that could easily have felt impersonal. Instead, when it ended, the group did not want to dissolve. We had never all sat around the same table, yet years later we are still a living community. From that experience came conversations, magazines, books, friendships and shared ways of looking.
It taught me how valuable a small circle of people can be when they have lived and worked through an experience together.
For this reason, every expedition includes six months of continued contact at no additional cost, and those months are where the photographs are carried to their end, together. A private group keeps the images moving between us: feedback, and a tuition that goes on, fed by cultural prompts — a book, an image, a thought, an exhibition, an occasion that opens a new direction. Each of you brings your images to a master file ready for fine print, and then we sit down, one to one, before the finished work. Then the group meets again, and there is a particular pleasure in it: seeing how far each of us has travelled since we parted. A Second Eye, an editor or a curator, reads the work as the profession reads it. And the work takes form, a collective book or a zine, depending on the event, and a public life, on a gallery wall or in the pages of Follow the Light. The images do not go back into a drawer. They go out into the world, and they go out together.
The event ends. The adventure in photography begins.
§ 04 — The Archive
Frames from Morocco — Mauritania
A selection of high-resolution frames captured on past expeditions. Select any image to view it full-size.