The Jewish Museum in London presents Morocco: Photographs by Elias Harrus and Pauline Prior on view through Sunday 6 March 2011.

An exhibition of photographs revealing the almost forgotten Jewish community of southern Morocco, where for over 1000 years Jewish life was marked by social and cultural co-existence with Muslim society.

The exhibition features evocative photographs from the Atlas Mountains and Sahara oases. Early photographs, taken in the 1940s and 1950s by Elias Harrus, reflect the deep links in Morocco between the Jewish and Muslim communities, their religious life, crafts and traditions. What makes them so precious is that the communities represented have since virtually disappeared. This is therefore a rare snapshot into a vanished world. In 2008, Pauline Prior revisited the regions photographed by Harrus and found a very different Morocco to the one Harrus had documented 50 years earlier.

Also on display is rare film footage, as well as traditional ceremonial costume from Morocco and a selection of jewellry from the Dahan-Hirsch Collection, Brussels.

There will be a lively programme of accompanying events, talks and performances. Plus the Jewish Museum’s kosher café will be offering special Moroccan delicacies and the museum shop will be selling a wide selection of Moroccan objects, so everyone can take a piece of Morocco home with them.

Presented at the Jewish Museum London in partnership with the Moroccan British Society.

Morocco: Photographs by Elias Harrus and Pauline Prior is an exhibition from the Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam.

Image: © Beit Hatfutsot, Tel Aviv

The Jewish Museum London brings together two distinguished museums with complementary collections – the Jewish Museum and the London Museum of Jewish Life.

The Jewish Museum was founded in 1932 by Professor Cecil Roth, Alfred Rubens and Wilfred Samuel. Originally located in Woburn House in Bloomsbury, it moved to an elegant early Victorian listed building in Camden Town in 1994. In the following year it amalgamated on a two-site basis with the former London Museum of Jewish Life in Finchley.

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