Ghosts We Believed In

Photography by Maria John. Fashion Designs, Art Direction, and Photo Editing by Pierre-Yves Dalka. Johannesburg, 2016.

“The Orient is watched, since its almost (but never quite) offensive behavior issues out of a reservoir of infinite peculiarity; the European, whose sensibility tours the Orient, is a watcher, never involved, always detached, always ready for new examples of what the Description de l’Egypte called “bizarre jouissance.” The Orient becomes a living tableau of queerness.”

― Edward Said, Orientalism