The word is out. Marrakech has a very distinguished hotel tradition; on one hand the numerous luxury hotels, such as the world-renowned La Mamounia, and on the other many small, personal hotels and maisons d’hôtes which can be discovered in the labyrinthine old town (medina).
Last year I had the privilege of advising the proprietors of the hotel Riad “Demeures d’Orient”, a noble dwelling in the medina of Marrakech, regarding their gardens. With certain exceptions, these gardens conform to the principals of the classic riad as already described in my previous blog.
In the course of the many conversations I held with the proprietors, they told me that they would like to revamp their website, and to have more attractive photos taken for the purpose, so I also offered to take on this job with the help of my good photographer/videographer friends Dennis Yulov and Eli Castson.
Our extended task now required us to capture the beauty and fragrance of this unique place both with photography and with a video clip produced by my firm phoxsmile.com. The proprietress, Sophie Faguay, is a captivating lady from the northern Ardèche region of France. Together with her parents and highly-qualified Moroccan craftsmen, she worked as a designer over many years to create this “oriental abode”, devoting herself entirely to the theme of Orientalism.
This fascinating style, which achieved great significance in painting as early as the nineteenth century, concerns itself with the perception of the so-called Orient in the eyes of us Europeans or indeed all Westerners. It is the idealisation of a world that differs from our own; the “other”, or “foreign”, which both attracts us, and yet sometimes stimulates a certain antipathetic reflex.
What Dennis, Eli and I found especially enjoyable was precisely this realisation of one intention, one theme, which was implemented consistently and in the utmost detail throughout the entire hotel. Sophie Faguay and her mother Jo have taken particular trouble over the design of the eleven suites, each of which expresses a different mix of Oriental and Occidental. Accordingly, in the “Vénitienne” suite Venetian style is combined with Moroccan elements, and the “Mandalay” suite is a fascinating marriage between Morocco and India. Europe’s fascination with the East is wonderfully expressed in Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres’s painting “La Grande Odalisque” of 1814. The piquancy lies in a pertinent blend of oriental exoticism and eroticism, exciting reveries perhaps principally in the male observer; although women too, I have frequently found, don’t hesitate to let themselves be entranced by such an atmosphere. Indeed, Hammam bathing scenes evoke the very fantasies that we have tried to bring to life, in keeping with the style of such a painting, via video and photograph.
The link to the hotel: www.demeuresdorient.com
The hotel riad “Demeures d’Orient” photographed by Eli Castson and Dennis Yulov.
The hotel riad “Demeures d’Orient” photographed by Eli Castson and Dennis Yulov.
Photography: Eli Castson and Dennis Yulov.
Jean A. D. Ingres: “Odalisque with a Slave”.
A glimpse inside the bathroom of the “Perle d’Orient” suite. Photography: Eli Castson
und Dennis Yulov.
The hotel riad “Demeures d’Orient” photographed by Eli Castson and Dennis Yulov.
Jean A. D. Ingres: “La Grand Odalisque” (1814)
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