Souk

These photos are completely unedited and in their original format.

A Souk usually refers to a marketplace or strip of open air shops in the Middle-East and North Africa. 

This photographic project had a few different focuses, all centering around the Souk area of the Sousse Medina. I credit this series to my inability to be a normal tourist. I achieved these shots specifically from the Sousse Ribat, a 9th Century limestone fortress on the edge of the medina. My friend Barbara and I first scaled the Ribat simply because it was something to do. The great mosque was closed, and this seemed like the next best thing. I began photographing features within the Ribat, little more than stone structures and passageways. Feeling completely uninspired, I looked out over the wall for a few minutes, when I noticed something curious happening beyond the fortress. 

I watched a middle aged man sit on the edge of a wall separating the Souk strip and an abandoned, overgrown green lot. The man rummaged through a large trash bag full of clothes and one by one, dropped articles into the green space, adding to a pile of once-somethings that was already there. A reoffender. I was too intellectually invested to even think about taking a picture. Once the clothes were sorted, he sluggishly threw himself back over the wall and into the Souk, where I lost him.

Looking at the pile of rubbish prompted me to look around and notice more rubbish, or rather, rubbish-to-be. I began to think of my climate activist friends back home, and how this problem of waste and overconsumption is present no matter the country. At this point I took out my camera, Barbara long gone, to a place where my thoughts wouldn’t echo into her meditation.