Ghorba is a term from Maghreb with no apparent translation. It has a very broad meaning: it describes the very particular feeling of strangeness in being a foreigner, far from your homeland.
When I was a child, during the ‘90s, the word "Moroccan" was indiscriminately used in Italy to describe any kind of immigrant, a misunderstanding coming perhaps from the fact that at the end of the 1970s the Moroccans were the first and most numerous group of people to seek their fortune in that country.
Today they remain one of the main communities of immigrants both in terms of seniority and number of people living on the Italian soil, currently with children of second and third- born generations.
The Ghorba series responds to a personal necessity to collect the stories of those who left their countries to seek their fortune abroad and those who are still trying, as my father did thirty years ago, to emerge in a distrustful society.
This series is part of a broader photographic and visual research on the Moroccan identity and more in general on the meaning of being a foreigner.