Nour El-Ghoumari

Morocco

“Capturing the essence of a street scene is like trying to bottle lightning: an intuitive grasp of the moment has to be coupled with emotional poise and deft technique. The successful street photographer has to capture the tempo of the street, the spontaneous eruption of beauty and meaning glimpsed in a child's eyes or an old man's defiant gaze. Blink and it is gone - forever.” - Nour

Nour El Ghoumari's empathetic images are considered by many critics and enthusiasts to rank among the finest photography today. His work has been the discussed in leading photographic magazines and books, a selection of which were reproduced in The World's Greatest Black and White Photographers, 2007. Since 1996 he has been exhibiting widely from London to Japan, from the Ukraine to Dubai – and every year in Morocco. He has won numerous international awards including the Gold Medal for Best Portrait in the Arab world for two consecutive years.

Nour was born in the ancient Moroccan capital Taza nestled between the Riff and the High Atlas some 120 km east of Fez. He showed a youthful love for art experimenting with house paints and walls to create images. Then a friend presented him with a camera and he has never looked back. In Britain he trained in black and white with Donald Scott, fell in love with digital photography and produced a series of powerful images illustrating the poetry of Boujamaa El Oufi and Ben Youness Majin. His passion, however, remains with street photography capturing the faces of the vulnerable or eccentric glimpsed in ancient market places, the back yards of the poor or framed by traditional architecture.

“I am attracted to the souks because I used to help my mother in the market when I was a boy. I used to sell cold water, or plastic bags, or friesâ€Ã‚¦Ã¢€ he confessed.

Nour El Ghoumari's images speak for themselves: they are imbued both with pain and understanding. He extracts them at shutter speed from the flow of the mundane, the everyday. Blink and they are gone!

Click and they stay with us – forever!