Types et costumes du Maroc
Types et costumes du Maroc
Types et costumes du Maroc
Types et costumes du Maroc
Types et costumes du Maroc
Types et costumes du Maroc
Types et costumes du Maroc
Types et costumes du Maroc
Types et costumes du Maroc
Types et costumes du Maroc
Types et costumes du Maroc
Types et costumes du Maroc
Types et costumes du Maroc Types et costumes du Maroc Types et costumes du Maroc Types et costumes du Maroc Types et costumes du Maroc Types et costumes du Maroc
Types et costumes du Maroc
BESANCENOT, Jean

Types et costumes du Maroc

Paris
Editions des Horizons de France
1940 [1942]
Size : 47 x 34.5 cm
Color : Coloris original
Condition : Très bon
Reference : 262
€11,000.00

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Description

Large folio of [2], XIV, [2], 62 pp. 8 pp. ch. A-H, 60 plates; loose as issued, in original publisher's folder.

Limited first edition, number 176 of 310 copies.

Sixty plates reproduced in facsimile and in monochrome  under captioned tissue papers, illustrating the traditional costumes of the different regions of Morocco after Besancenot's gouaches, most of them hand-coloured by the artist. With a double-page colour geographical map locating the costumes represented and 8 detail plates in black illustrating the main drapes of the urban Arab Kaik, Berber, male and female urban costumes, Berber and Israelite, the jewelry.

With a preface by Christian Funck-Brentano and historical and sociological notes on the populations and their costumes.

Artist, draftsman and painter at the service of ethnography, Jean Besancenot (1902-1992) arrived in Morocco in 1934 with the intention of carrying out a study on the costume. As a non Muslim and male foreigner, he faced many difficulties in his investigation, encountering the notion of intimacy, particularly in the study of female costume. 

The fruit of five years of stubborn investigation, this magnificent work presents 60 of the most beautiful or most representative costumes accompanied by explanatory texts written by the artist. Of great importance for Moroccan ethnography, the work testifies to the many costumes that have now disappeared. (Besancenot, Costumes of Morocco, pp.5-6, 2nd edition, 2008)

BESANCENOT, Jean

Jean Besancenot (1902-1992), pseudonym of Jean Girard, was a French photographer, painter, draughtsman and ethnologist who was mainly interested in the intersections between art and ethnography in Morocco during the first half of the 20th century.

He arrived for the first time in Morocco in 1934 and travelled throughout the country for 5 years documenting in an ethnographic way the cultural richness expressed through traditional costumes and ornaments of the different Moroccan ethnic groups. His work, composed of photographs, films, drawings and paintings, testifies to the aestheticism of the Moroccan cultural heritage, still little marked by Western influence.

His book Costumes of Morocco was published in 1942 at the end of his first trip and presents 60 documented plates of Moroccan costumes and their meanings in local customs. His work allowed him to become the iconographic manager of the French Protectorate in Morocco and a collaborator at the Musée de l'Homme in Paris. The product of his several stays in Morocco allows him to offer us, through the texts that accompany his work, a meticulous classification by geographical and ethnographic origin of his subjects. Thanks to Besancenot, we can admire cultural manifestations that have now disappeared among the Moroccan population because of its contact with the Western world.

In 1984, the Institut du Monde Arabe acquired nearly 1800 of his documents. Each photograph is accompanied by a descriptive sheet containing a technical description of the clothing or ornaments, and explanatory elements on the ethnic and geographical origin of the subject. His work was notably honored at the House of Photography in Marrakech in 2018.