Marco del Pra’ is a compassionate and thoughtful photojournalist, deeply concerned about the state of the human condition and social justice. The images from his Morocco series shown here comprise a compelling document of a traditional culture in the midst of a traumatic transition. He was born in Italy in 1979, studied Photography in Milan, and Visual Communication at the Bauhaus University in Weimar, Germany. Based in Berlin since 2005, del Pra’ is working as a freelance photographer for international newspapers and magazines as well as on editorial and more extensive photojournalistic projects. He is represented by image|trust photo agency. Here, in his own articulate and heartfelt words, he reveals his mission, his unique creative process, and the current state of Morocco, a country for which he clearly has deep affection.
Q: What equipment did you use to shoot your Morocco series?
A: This essay was all shot with a M6 TTL and a Summicron 28mm f/2 ASPH on Tri- X film. I also own a Summicron 90mm f/2.0 and a Leica R6.2 with a Summicron 50mm f/2.
Q: What made you travel to Morocco and take these images? What was the idea or inspiration behind them?
A: I traveled to Morocco for the first time at the age of 11 with my father. It was the first time that I had visited a non-Western country, so my Western-style viewing habits faltered and my entire visual perception expanded to a whole new dimension. Fascinated by the contradictions that characterize this country, the light and magic, I have since returned regularly to Morocco. Over the years I have observed how quickly this country is changing and trying to find connections to the neighboring Europe and becoming more and more open to the rules of a global economy. Intuitively, I try with my camera to take the pace of these developments, to capture individual images that convey the changes in context, all the while being keenly aware of the complexity of this ongoing process.
In my travels, I have always tried to talk with young people my age, and I have learned to appreciate their perspective and hopelessness of their generation. In 2003, in cooperation with the artist Juliane Wedell, we executed a project, “Transit Mediterran,” that dealt with Morocco’s Southern European border. We documented an overcrowded refugee camp in Ceuta, the port of Tangier, Ceuta and Melilla, the two visible border fences of Europe at that time, showing young men waiting in a boat to be smuggled to Europe, and the Mediterranean beaches from where the small wooden boats set off at night for Spain. We drove to the Andalusian vegetable plantations where migrants seeking work are employed under adverse conditions. We drove to Tarifa, where the Red Cross regularly holds the bodies of refugees who have lost their lives on the 15km-wide Strait of Gibraltar. For the “Plastico” project I returned to Andalusia and to Morocco in 2004, to document the working conditions of migrants and refugees in the “vegetable garden” of Europe.
In winter 2010/11, as the Arab Spring had already engulfed Tunisia and Libya, I was in Morocco. At the demonstrations in February 2011, I witnessed the energy of a new movement, a movement that wants a democratic country in which to live in freedom, dignity and social justice. I’m following with much interest and anxiety the developments in the country and I’m planning to stay there longer in autumn 2013.
Q: How would you describe your photography?
A: My approach is definitely documentary and photojournalistic but I don’t like to characterize it too precisely. In any case I am very demanding. As with all the other instruments or tools you need to do a lot of practice, and to continually sharpen your view. I think my photography has a lot to do with hunting and harvesting. My series collect images from different years. I often write only the first two or three chapters of the whole story; then quite a bit later pieces of the puzzle, new chapters are added. This is why most of my personal projects are still open and works in progress and some of them have not even been scanned and are not viewable online. Often I leave the negatives alone for a long time before approaching them again. I need the break in order to distance myself from the emotions of the situation. Only then I can critique my own work and decide whether an image has validity.
I have an almost obsessive passion with composition. I really like the challenge of a composition excised from the daily flow of time. Unlike painters who can devote a lot of time to composing their work, we photographers have to compose in a fraction of a second, and some of us still prefer to select the shutter speed, the lens aperture, and to focus manually. My M6 is an exceptionally perfect tool for this.  This constant challenge gives me an adrenalin rush, and I love the feelings before, during and after having taken a picture. I never, ever orchestrate the scene or ask people to turn or look this way or that.
Probably one of the major links between photography and art is in fact the desire to compose. But I am a very malleable photographer too. For editorial and commercial purposes I do work in color and digital, portrait and fashion, as well as covering politics and major events.
Q: At what point did you get interested in photography?
A: I realized very early that photography has an incredible potential for expression. I have always been interested in all sorts of art and I never saw any boundaries between art and photography. The first time I realized that photography could become a profession was 1997 when I attended a fantastic 50 Years of Magnum retrospective in Paris.
Q: The most striking overall visual aspects of your Morocco pictures are the quality of the light and the high contrast of most of the images, which are emphasized by the black-and-white medium. Do you agree, and what can you say about these things, especially your preference for black-and-white, and Kodak Tri-X film in particular?
A: I agree that the quality of the light is special, and I believe it has something to do with the Summicron lens I use (I don’t want this to sound like an ad!) and with the fact they they’re shot on film. Black-and white is something of a stylistic factor that I grew up with. I do appreciate color photography too, but when it comes to feelings and narration I still do prefer B&W.
Tri-X is a film that needs no introduction. You learn to know its capabilities mostly in the darkroom. It is predictable and it has its own way of a way of telling stories. In every situation it does its job and adds something unpredictable all its own. I can not explain it in words, but the combination of Tri-X and Leica lenses creates images that are somehow distinguishable from all others. It’s a very “expressive“ film.
Anyway it must also be said that those who develop the negatives play a crucial role in the whole process. I’m fortunate indeed to be able to have absolute trust in the person who develops my negatives, and every time I go to pick them up it still seems to me that I hold in my hands something magical. It’s also a question of touch and two-dimensionality. Digital in this sense leaves you literally empty-handed.

Q: A number of your images convey a visceral feeling of spaciousness, notably of a figure walking across a vast open plaza toward a tower and an overhead view of another open public space with flags in the center and tiny silhouetted figures on benches in the foreground. These pictures convey an emotional sense of place very effectively. Can you say something about why you shot them and what they mean to you?
A: All these pictures strike me as almost being landscapes. Pictures #16 and #17 perhaps evoke the feelings you get in experiencing of this “new“ country that has changed and is changing so much in recent years. The space is being transformed and becoming modern but it’s still attached to traditional architecture. These images also reveal the stalling of a country in search of a middle ground between East and West, past, present and future. The image with the two women walking on the seas chore in that sense is a modern landscape too as it tries to describe the melancholic feeling of freedom of today’s emerging society.
It must be said that Morocco in recent years is also experiencing a revolution of brick and cement. The country seems to have no control over the architectural crimes that have been perpetrated for years now. The coast is about to be destroyed permanently with “palaces—private residences  and luxury hotels”—a sign of corruption, total lack of urban planning, and the violation of any rules of environmental ethics.

Q: You are very emphatic in stating that you never ask people to pose or even to stop what they are doing or look in a certain direction, and yet you managed to capture a rather amazing image that freezes a young man in mid-air as he somersaults off a trapezoidal concrete structure. How did you manage to get such a precisely composed shot without knowing in advance when the guy was going to jump, and can you tell us the story behind it?
A: In documentary photography it is my guiding principle that I select moments from the flow of time without altering the reality of what I see before me. I want to take honest pictures without changing  reality at the time or in post-production. That’s too easy. I know that sometimes the mere presence of a photographer can change a scene, a look, a movement. That’s why I try to be as discreet as possible. I think that respect for the subject, and the attitude of the person taking the picture are the foundation of an good image.
The picture you refer to was not staged. It’s a snapshot taken on the seashore in Rabat. I saw this group of young guys doing incredible jumps and instinctively approached them, indicating my intention to take pictures. They had nothing against it so I took not more than 5-6 images. Then we started to talk, exchanged contacts and had a short, pleasant encounter on the beach.

Q: There is a rather disturbing image of two young guys smiling for the camera while one fondles what looks like a real automatic pistol. It’s reminiscent of some street gang images shot in the U.S.A. in the ‘60s and ‘70s. What were you thinking and how did you feel when you took this shot, and in retrospect what does it say to you?
A: It all happened very quickly, on a very busy day in the little side streets of Rabat, and the gun draw my attention. It reminds me too, of street gang images shot in the ´60s  and ´70s, a provocative image that raises many questions. I’m not sure whether it was a real or fake pistol, but I am happy the guy’s face who is holding holding it isn’t in the frame.
Q: You commented that photography and art comprise a kind of visual continuum, and that there are a lot of parallels between photography and literature. Do you think words can contribute to images by guiding the viewer toward their meaning (as they often do in newspapers, a medium you’re skeptical of), or do they function in other ways?
A: The right words can add important information to photographs by providing context. Take for example the works of Mario Giacomell— very few words other than the titles of the images, but they’re as essential as a red thread bookmark. I have great respect for authors; writing is an incredible art-form. To me the feelings and sensations that good literature convey have something very photographic, an almost cinematic character. You need time and dedication to perceive them. The same is true for photography. One single photograph can hold a whole poem inside it but you must also know how to decipher it, and especially, just as with reading a book, you need to decelerate and take your time to do so effectively. In this sense photography in daily newspapers is only scratching the surface.
Q: You mentioned that you often leave your negatives alone for a long time to distance yourself from the emotion of the situation. Since one of the essential elements in art is communicating emotion why do you find this necessary, and how does it help you to achieve your artistic goals?
A: Photography evokes different emotions depending on whether you have experienced the scene in person or not. The temporal distance makes me be more critical and more sensitive to the emotions hidden in the image itself, more than the sensations that bind me as a photographer to the whole temporal context. I realized that right after I take a series pictures I like almost all of them. But with the passage of time only a few continue to maintain some sort of objective aesthetic value and documentary content in them. Like a good bottle of wine, some types of photography get better with age.
Thank you for your time, Marco!
– Leica Internet Team
For more information on Marco, visit his website and blog.