Originally located on the Saharan trade routes, Marrakesh was a convenient staging post for caravans and developed into a major craft and trading center. Today, its teeming souks carry on the trading tradition. Marrakesh’s medina is an intricate maze of narrow streets, often protected from the sun by slated awnings. By mid morning, the Souk Smarine, the busiest street in the souks, is ablaze in shafts of light. It is the sight of shoppers threading their way through these shafts of light that gives this image its meaning and character. Intent on their purposes, they take little or no note of it. But for a photographer, such exotic light is the reason for shooting. It is as if most of these shoppers are being incongruously driven through the souk by an unacknowledged power.