In the summer of 1955 a relatively naive and uninformed John Cohen crossed the straits of Gibraltar. He arrived in Tangier with a handwritten note in cursive Arabic; the man who had composed it in New York had told him to _keep this paper far from your passport._ Cohen had no idea why or indeed what the note said; it was not addressed to a specific person. He was simply instructed to look for a certain man when he arrived, who would then send him to _the others._ Cohen_s otherwise straightforward trip to make photographs in Morocco thus began with a sense of intrigue and perhaps risk. This was Cohen_s first journey outside America to see the world. In his words: _The camera led my way to a distant culture, along with the desire to represent what I could see and sense there, and not be distracted by chronology or thought. My photographs were intended to be a sensual response to light and to the people who inhabited these spaces.

These Morocco photos were . an indication of what was to come._ "By the time I got to Rabat the sense of tension was unmistakable. There were French soldiers marching through the streets, there was the rumour that on the Sultan_s day, August 20th, there would be uprisings. And that the exiled Sultan was not in Madagascar, but was on the moon. John Cohe.