Daoud Aoulad-Syad

Daoud Aoulad-Syad (b. 1953, Marrakech) is a Moroccan photographer and filmmaker based in Morocco. His black-and-white photographs record popular culture, circus arts and collective memory. He photographs street performers and travelling entertainers, mothers, fishermen and potters, in portraits made against white backgrounds and in documentary images of the street.

He first trained as a scientist, preparing a doctorate in physics at the University of Nancy and working as a physics lecturer, and took up photography in the same period. He later trained in film at the École nationale supérieure des métiers de l'image et du son (La Fémis) in Paris. His feature films include Adieu forain (1998), Le Cheval de vent (2001), Tarfaya (2004), La Mosquée (2010) and Les voix du désert (2018).

In 2015 the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris held a solo exhibition of more than fifty of his photographs, curated by Mouna Mekouar, as part of the first Biennale des photographes du monde arabe contemporain. In 2026 the Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden (MACAAL) in Marrakech presented his solo exhibition Le temps d'un battement de cil.