In this body of research and original photographic work to which it responds, I examine the position and connotation of Morocco as a site for artistic inspiration in travel literature, photography and fashion photography in the context of three main themes relating to its imaginary constructions: Orientalism; the western male traveller in contradistinction to the female tourist; and the figure of the cultured flâneur.

These themes became associated with European industrialization and imperialism towards the end of the nineteenth century, and the research draws links between this particular period of culture and its values, and our present day, romantic fascination with Morocco, and the revival of such themes and their popular reincarnation in contemporary fashion editorials.

The article investigates the role that photography has played in the development of twenty-first century Orientalism and its manifestation in visual fashion storytelling, and the interplay between artist-subject-location: how does the western traveller/photographer view both himself and others in the process of picturing the Maghreb and what are the kinds of relationships and tensions that develop between the traveller/photographer and the North African sites that he observes?

The research focuses on the long association between travel and sexual adventure and explores the literary and visual narratives involving the figures of the contemporary traveller and tourist in the North African space and place, and how adventurer and location feed off one another.

By examining the appropriation of such figures and motifs from art and literature into contemporary photography of travel and fashion photography, the article aims to consider the visual representation and specific propositions of locations such as Tangier, Marrakesh, Assilah and the Moroccan Sahara as chaotic, dangerous and alien, and understand the complex, post-Orientalist rendition of the North African space and visual culture within the context of fashion photography.

More specifically this article poses the following questions: why does our western culture want or need to revisit condescending Orientalist fantasies and an imperialist mode of representation? And in what way are the tropes of Orientalist representation tied to the fantasies, desires and anxieties that the fashion industry and its consumer engage with? The article takes Morocco’s strong ties with western cultural figures as its starting point, and in times of intense political and social unrest in the Arab world – the continuing fascination with and promotion of this Muslim country as a sensual tourist destination by fashion editorial and ad campaign shoots.

The article considers two photography monographs by western male travellers/photographers shooting photographic bodies of work in a foreign Islamic country: Paul Bowles’ How Could I Send a Picture into the Desert (Bowles and Bischoff 1994) and Harry Gruyaert’s Morocco (1990), in addition to several case studies from literature (Peter Mayne, Elias Canetti); photography (Irving Penn, Daido Moriyama); and contemporary fashion editorial work (William Klein, Jack Pierson, Azim Haidaryan, Inez Van Lamsweerde/Vinoodh Matadin, Mario Testino, Hans Feurer, Steven Meisel and Daniel Riera). It aims to establish links between the visual representation of travel and the context of gender, fashion, identity and sexuality and the psychological dimension of tourism.