The book title of John Cohen’s photographs taken in Morocco in 1955, Look Up To The Moon, might suggest a wistfulness on his part but if so it is tangential to his interest in taking pictures of the country. He was twenty three and, influenced by Cartier-Bresson’s work, he was ‘motivated by the possibilities of my own vision’. In an introductory note, he says how ‘The camera led my way to images of a distant culture, along with the desire to represent what I could see and sense there, and not be distracted by chronology or thought’. It has taken sixty years for his pictures to be published but they have been worth waiting for.
