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I’ve been returning to Morocco a few times across 25 years, but Casablanca keeps calling me back — a city that never pretends to be picturesque, yet always feels alive. It’s not the glamorous Morocco of postcards or desert myths. It’s the Morocco of glass towers rising beside colonial façades, of street vendors shouting over car horns, and of teenagers posing for selfies against walls painted with verses of freedom.

Casablanca is where I find energy and reality. The light here is sharp, almost cinematic, cutting through the ocean haze and bouncing off the white façades of the city’s endless boulevards. I walk for hours, over the weekend when my meetings are over, with my Leica slung across my shoulder, chasing reflections in café windows, traces of time on walls, and those fleeting gestures that say more than any political speech: a handshake between generations, a woman balancing tradition and modern rhythm, a boy sketching graffiti on a cracked pillar.

This is Morocco’s modern heart — restless, ambitious, and quietly reinventing itself. The young people I meet speak three or four languages, dream of Lisbon, Montréal, or Seoul, and yet insist that their future is here. They design, paint, code, film — shaping an identity that blends Amazigh patterns with global street culture.

Still, the tension is tangible. For every mural shouting optimism, there’s a story of waiting — for a job, a visa, a chance. You can feel it in the rhythm of the city: creative, impatient, but somehow grounded in faith and family. Casablanca is a lesson in balance — between freedom and belonging, between the call to prayer and the beat of electronic music drifting from rooftop bars.

When the light fades, I reach the Great Mosque, stretching toward the Atlantic. The mosques, cranes, and advertising billboards all glow in the same grey-sh dusk. A group of kids plays football in the dust beside a construction site. It’s an image I keep coming back to: old dreams meeting new ones, in the same fragile space.

These photographs are from my walks through Casablanca — moments where Morocco’s contradictions turned into light, colour, and rhythm. Leica M7 with a Tmax400 and iPhone