And what was it like, traveling to Mauritania? I heard that you ran into a great deal of trouble.
When I crossed from Morocco into Mauritania…[the border guards] pretty much searched me until they found all the cash that I had. And they took it all from me and said, “now you can go”. And at that point, it was a little bit of a matter of survival. I was either going to have to barter my camera equipment or my watch, and I said, “well, give me back my money”. And that got them a bit upset, and they basically told me to go back to Morocco. The small detail there is that between the two countries there is about a seven-kilometer-deep minefield, and that goes on for various hundred miles east and west. So, having to trek back through the minefield was a bit of an experience! By the time I got back to the Moroccan border, the border was closed. I had to spend the night in this no-man’s land.

What did it feel like when you finally got to Nouadhibou, to be surrounded by all those abandoned ships?
You really felt like these were languishing or lamenting people. There were a couple of shots — there was one where I saw these two ships leaning into each other, and I realized it reminded me of an old couple, in their older years. Or these beasts just calling out, almost like a beached whale — and just bemoaning and asking for help but knowing its situation and plight is helpless.