The Chouara tannery in Fès - rows of stone vats filled with dye and lime, a worker crossing the rims

Morocco

The Tanneries of Fès

The ancient tanneries of Fès are a living medieval workshop where workers soften and dye hides in stone vats, preserving centuries-old craft, labor, and color amid the medina’s pungent air.

The series

The Tanneries of Fès

A worker crosses the stone rims between the vats

Two tanners lift a soaked hide from a stone pit

A tanner works a bundle of hides with a long pole

A tanner kneels at the edge of a vat, boots caked in tannery fluid

A worker emerges from a dark passage to the drying wall

The honeycomb of stone vats, with hides stretched to dry above

Rusted corrugated sheeting over the liming pits

Salted hides hung to dry against a medina wall

Animal hides drying on a wooden rack at an outdoor tannery, with a blue barrel and peeling plaster walls

An elderly worker in a plaid shirt and stained apron stands in the sun-drenched courtyard of the Tanneries of Fès, surrounded by sacks of raw wool

A high-angle, sunlit view of the Chouara Tannery in Fès, a dense grid of stone vats with white, brown, and red liquids, yellow hides drying on rooftops

A laborer in a red shirt scrubs a raw animal hide in the rushing, foamy waters of the river at the Chouara Tanneries in Fès

On the series

From the sun-baked terraces overlooking the Chouara Tannery, Fès unfolds as a living palette of ochre, indigo, and crimson-hundreds of stone vats filled with dyes, lime, and water, arranged like a giant honeycomb. I have watched men stand waist-deep in these ancient pits, their legs stained by saffron and poppy, softening hides under the same Moroccan sun that has dried leather for over a thousand years. The air carries an unforgettable bite of ammonia and pigeon droppings, used to strip the skins, yet through my viewfinder the scene is eerily beautiful: the workers move with slow, deliberate grace, as if performing a ritual older than the medina itself.

But beyond the striking geometry and color, the tanneries are a testament to endurance and inherited labor. I have photographed calloused hands pulling hides from milky limestone baths, and artisans rubbing them with oil and dye until they gleam like polished wood. Fathers teach sons the secrets of the trade, and though modern machinery now exists, here the work remains stubbornly, proudly human. To document the tanneries of Fès is to capture a place where craftsmanship is not nostalgia but daily survival, and where every piece of leather carries the smell, sweat, and soul of the ancient city.

Available as 1/1sEach photograph in this Morocco series is released as a one-of-one NFT. View and collect the Spirit of Morocco Collection on OpenSea.