Hassan Hajjaj describes the type of photographic subject he’s attracted to as born with a certain quality that’s tricky to crystallize. “You can see in their eyes. You can see in their body language. You can hear it when they speak, in their passion.” (Conversely, “You can notice somebody’s bullshit, sorry to say.”) His subjects mainly include friends, like American DJ Honey Dijon, Moroccan actress Sarah Perles and Nigerian musician Afrikan Boy. But even with subjects he doesn’t know well, the Moroccan photographer trusts connection; if it’s a new sitter, he uses the first session to get to know them. “Now you can do a Google search,” he says of contextualizing a person, “but I’d rather not.”
Hajjaj’s vibrant and stylish portraits are presently on view in New York City at Hannah Traore Gallery, which is showing a selection of images—hung against canary-yellow walls with white and blue striping—produced over a twenty-year period. Curated with his friend, Moroccan artist Meriem Yin, “People of My Time” showcases Hajjaj’s signature patterned mise-en-abyme, although this iteration of Hajjaj’s work is inordinately small-scale relative to his usual dimensions. Alongside the portraits, Hajjaj created a tearoom, a cushioned corner for lounging in the gallery.
As an adolescent, Hajjaj left northern Morocco and moved to west London. He quit school at 15 and, from the early ‘80s to the early ‘90s, opened a streetwear shop in Covent Garden, selling vinyl in the basement. (R.A.P. referenced the music genre and doubled as an acronym for Real Artistic People.) Concurrently, Hajjaj threw underground parties; you’d have to buy a ticket, then call a phone number to get a location to a bus that would take you to a secret venue with live bands, DJs and wall paintings.
During this same era, Hajjaj was using a Polaroid and a Pentax MX. He pivoted more seriously towards photography after a show he had in Marrakech called “Graffix from the Souk.” The Italian singer Pino Daniele—“he’s like Bruce Springsteen; he’s massive”—came to Hajjaj’s show, loved the work and bought a piece. At the time, Hajjaj went to lunch with him, having no clue who he was. Months later, Daniele decided to use the work he bought for his album cover. He invited Hajjaj to Rome for the album release, where he asked him to sign 150 copies of the image to distribute to the press. In the aftermath, Hajjaj started to give more weight to his art practice, and himself as an artist. “I decided to see what I have inside me… Is it just a phase?” he recalls thinking. He didn’t feel he’d earned the designation ‘artist’ yet, but it got him on that path.
Hajjaj himself is not a flashy dresser, but in his studios in London and Marrakech, he’s always designing, sketching and having things sewn. “If I see a textile, I design without having the person in mind to shoot,” he says. He has thousands of outfits on hand and hundreds of pairs of sunglasses and socks (for the latter, the bright-hued brand Happy Socks reached out to collaborate). Once his subjects’ outfits have been determined, Hajjaj selects a few different backdrops against which to shoot. And when the photo is finalized, he places cans or mats around the image as a frame. Despite this extensive layering of multiple motifs, Hajjaj strives for balance, not clash. “When you look at the picture, nothing takes away from anything else. The main person is the sitter; every aspect just highlights the other.”
All his shoots are done outside, in the spirit of freewheeling street photography, in natural light. He scouts places to hang up his backdrops, often in front of or behind storefronts. He’s done shoots in L.A., Dubai, New York, Marrakech, Paris… but you’d never guess that from the crop of a photo, which renders it placeless. Shooting on the street means there are distractions, cars and passers-by. The best subjects, creatives all, don’t flinch at this. “They just lock with you. I don’t have to push them. They have that pizzazz.” Hajjaj doesn’t say much when shooting: “I just flow and play. And sometimes, I do a few sessions with them because I like the way they move.”
The subjects’ poses are often direct and uncomplicated; Hajjaj shoots “people who have a presence just standing in front of the camera.” There are some gymnastic exceptions (“If somebody’s a dancer, you can ask them to do something”); in his New York show, the poses include a handstand from within a basket, a wide-legged leap in front of a gas station and a cartwheel over a plastic crate. “I build a stage, dress them up as a rock star and they perform for me: simple as that,” Hajjaj says. (Is it harder to shoot groups? “No. You just have to be patient.”) When he travels, he packs up all the accessories and backdrops and ships them to his destination, weighing in at “sometimes 80 kilos,” he marvels. He works with a small team, often including his son. “When I’m shooting, I’m trying to create my own village.”
He’s been at the trade long enough that he has seen the media change. “With film, it was easier. Six shots, you take your time. With digital, I tend to shoot a lot more.” His current editing process involves selecting ten to twenty pictures, stripping down to the top five and then choosing the final image. “Normally, if I’m editing, I’m editing for a show. I’ll print small pictures, and then I’ll start doing the layout on the floor for how I want them to be hanging.” The images are always reacting to each other: “This one’s looking this one way, the other looking that way; male, female. I start putting it together with the colors, so they’re talking to each other.”
The tearoom has been an ongoing complement to his visuals since the 90s. “For me, it’s about putting people together,” he reasons. At the Victoria and Albert Museum, he wanted people to be able to sit—hospitality is part and parcel of the experience of his work. “They were like, ‘Well, no, you can’t have that.’ This is before social media,” he notes. “And I said, ‘No, I want it.’ That’s been in the blood.”
More recently, Hajjaj has taken the tearoom concept to the next level by creating a tea brand with a collector-turned-partner, Amine el Baroudi, a manufacturer based in Marrakech. Before collaborating, el Baroudi would supply Hajjaj with cans to use in his works—and he’d inquire about doing a tea brand every time they met. After a while, Hajjaj decided: why not? For Jajjah—his last name backward—he goes to the mixing lab and invites artists to design the packaging. The tea is available at a namesake showroom in Marrakech and MFF Sidi Ghanem – Marrakech Fine Food, in addition to being served at his museum shows. His ideal would be to have it at the Standard Hotel.
He also had a hand in designing the bottles for Sidi Ali, “the Evian of Morocco,” and collaborated with Tunisian-French artist El Seed to produce small-batch olive oil (about 900 bottles) made from his family’s farm. It’s a way to be “part of our culture”—both water and olive oil are cited in the Quran.
His visual output includes work currently on view at C/O Berlin Foundation’s show on contemporary African photography and images in a group show with 193 Gallery in April. Next year, he will show in Australia at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney and participate in a group show at the Quai Branly in Paris.
His work may be all over the place, but Hajjaj is firmly based in his native country; it’s his center. When asked if the artist community in Morocco feels different—more professionalized—since the 1-54 art fair became an annual event in Marrakech as of 2018, he reflects that, at first, it drew more international galleries than Moroccan locals, but that has shifted. He notes that photography at contemporary art fairs is not well-represented relative to paintings and textiles: “It’s still understood as editions, versus one-off and unique.”
Beyond the fair, he notes Marrakech’s increase in traffic and housing developments, though he’s relieved the old traditions remain steadfast. Marrakech, he remarks, is “where you can see a donkey and a woman with a Louis Vuitton bag walking past.” And that’s the kind of contrast he’s here for.
“People of My Time” is on view at Hannah Traore Gallery through March 29.
