Fakes, Frauds and Forgers

Fakes, Frauds and Forgers

Each region in Morocco tells a story, a history of long-gone life illustrated by fossils: Erfoud orthoceras and sea-lilies, Alnif trilobites, Khouribga shark teeth, Agadir ammonites, Dinosaurs and their footprints in the Kem Kem and the Atlas...

Nature is the original forger: it replaces an original creature with a perfect reproduction in stone.

As a dinosaur left his footprints in the riverbank clay of the Atlas, light passing through the camera's lens leaves a precise trace on the photosensitive surface. The inciting event is ephemeral and living, the trace frozen in time.

The arrival of manmade molds - a "negative" form made from the original, which can later be filled with hard-setting material to create multiple "positive" duplicates of the original - opened floodgates of creativity and counterfeiting.

Photography - "drawing with light" - applied the positive/negative principal to the world of visible light.