Karawan

Driving through the hills outside the cities, where it was empty and nobody else was around, Woudt stopped near a herd of sheep with a shepherd. He stepped out of the car, asked if he could take a photograph. The shepherd stood proudly, hand on hip, posing naturally. At that moment, everything clicked. The peace of mind returned. No crowds, no pressure. Just the subject and the camera.

"For me personally, that was an affirmation," Woudt said in the documentary filmed during the trip. "I need peace, but also some feeling of security to be able to do that."

The Sahara presented a different challenge. The sand dunes had been photographed millions of times. Woudt was not interested in repeating that. He searched for movement instead of stillness: camels, people, traces of life in the vast emptiness.

Throughout the journey, photographing people on the street proved nearly impossible. Group pressure, religious sensitivities around portraiture, and a persistent sense of government surveillance made spontaneous portraits extremely difficult. At every riad, Woudt asked the owners if they knew anyone willing to sit for a portrait. When that worked, as with the girl who posed in a safe, quiet setting at one of the riads, the results were among his strongest images of the trip.

But the limitations of the journey became part of the work's identity. Recognising that his story was not yet complete, Woudt purchased traditional Moroccan clothing during the trip and, back in the Netherlands, cast models of Moroccan descent to photograph in his studio. The resulting studio portraits, including nudes and figures in traditional garb, completed the series on his own terms.

Themes & Intent

Karawan is not a travelogue. It is a meditation on what happens when a photographer leaves the controlled environment he has built for himself and confronts the unknown.

At its core, the project explores the tension between comfort and discomfort, between the studio and the street. Woudt is not a street photographer. He has never pretended to be. His strength lies in controlled situations: quiet settings, one subject, focused attention. Morocco tested that assumption relentlessly. The Medina overwhelmed him. The chaos of city life made him shut down. But in the countryside, in the empty hills, in the silence of the Sahara, his visual instincts returned.

The series is structured around three subjects that recur throughout Woudt's practice: portraits, still lifes, and landscapes. In Karawan, these three lines are woven together into a single narrative. A face full of character. A black vase against a wall. Dunes receding into haze. Each image is treated with the same graphic clarity, the same reduction to essence.

The choice for black and white was not aesthetic but conceptual. As Woudt explained: "With black-and-white photography, you remove a piece of reality. The image becomes timeless." Morocco, with its saturated colours and photogenic surfaces, could easily seduce a photographer into cliché. Monochrome strips that away. What remains is form, texture, light. The images become less about Morocco and more about seeing.

Woudt's visual signature, minimalism, graphic composition, strong contrast, the use of negative space, runs through the entire series. Inspired by the photographic masters he studied through books and exhibitions, Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Man Ray, he applies a contemporary sensibility to classical subjects. The result is work that feels both of its time and outside of it.

Working in the Field

Working in Morocco forced Woudt to confront the limits of his process. In the Netherlands, he controls every variable: light, backdrop, distance, mood. On the road, none of that existed. The challenge was not technical but psychological. It required overcoming apprehension, finding calm in unfamiliar situations, and accepting that the work would not always come on demand.

"I keep finding it difficult," he said during the trip. "In the Netherlands it feels safe as I photograph people in a studio where I direct everything. When travelling, that's different."

The most productive moments came when external conditions aligned with his internal requirements: quiet, space, and a willing subject. The shepherd in the hills. The girl at the riad. The stillness of the desert at dawn. Between those moments, there was doubt, frustration, and the persistent feeling that he was not making enough work. But that discomfort, Woudt later reflected, was precisely what pushed him back to his strengths. By moving away from the hustle, he found the simplicity that defines his visual language.