By Zainab Mehdi, The New Arab, 11 September 2026

 

LONDON, 18 Sept. - (ANA) - Tucked away on a quiet street in Shoreditch is LARACHE, Hassan Hajjaj’s shop, studio and general hangout space.

 

It’s a Sunday, and the Moroccan artist and photographer has just finished shooting two families when I arrive. Inside, there is a lot to look at. Colourful clothes, sunglasses, shoes, bags, cans, tins and plenty of Hajjaj’s trademark patterns and prints fill the space.

 

His photographs are hard to miss. Traditional Moroccan djellabas, caftans, headscarves and babouches sit alongside Nike, Gucci and Versace-style logos, animal prints, stripes and bright colours. His sitters might be sitting on an overturned Coca-Cola crate, leaning against a motorbike or holding a football or musical instrument.

 

Even the smallest details are very Hajjaj. Tomato paste tins, olive and harissa tins, and Coca-Cola cans are stacked around his subjects, while colourful plastic mats and Moroccan fabrics serve as backdrops.

 

Looking around LARACHE, there are clearly many different influences at play. But Hajjaj says he has never been able to point to one person or one particular moment and say, "That’s where it all started."

 

"I think there are too many influences to name, and I don’t have one particular person," he tells The New Arab. "It could be a film, a book or travelling. I’d say it’s probably more about the journey of my life and what I grew up with."

 

That mix has been there for a long time. Hajjaj says his work has grown by trying things out, picking up new ideas and then bringing them into what he was already doing.

 

"I wouldn’t say it was something that happened from day one," he says. "It was more of an evolution, doing things, experimenting and seeing where they took me. Each thing happened and added another layer to the next."

 

One of those early influences was fashion. In the 1980s, Hajjaj ran a shop called R.A.P, selling clothes that would now be described as streetwear, including T-shirts with fake Chanel No. 5 and Gucci branding. He was also influenced by New York designer Dapper Dan, who became known for using luxury logos in his own designs.

 

"I used to have a shop called R.A.P., which stood for Real Artistic People, back in the 80s. I was selling clothes, which we now call streetwear,” he says. “We used to sell a lot of counterfeit versions of brands like Chanel No. 5 and Gucci and stuff like that."

 

It was not just about the clothes themselves. Hajjaj was interested in how these brands, logos, and products could be taken apart and played with.

 

"I grew up on Dapper Dan from New York,” he says. “He was really one of the people who helped make counterfeit fashion even bigger."

 

 

 

 

This approach of taking something familiar and placing it somewhere unexpected is still evident throughout his photographs. A designer logo might appear next to a Moroccan slipper, while a tin of tomato paste can become part of a carefully arranged portrait.

 

The tomato cans, tins and other everyday objects also take Hajjaj back to Morocco. They are not simply there because they are colourful; they come from the world he grew up in.

 

The same goes for the patterns. Growing up in Morocco, Hajjaj was surrounded by mosaics, tiles, calligraphy and repeated shapes, which eventually became a big part of his own work.

 

"Growing up in Morocco, which is an Islamic country, we’re not really supposed to have figurative images and things like that," he says.

 

"So a lot of what’s traditionally considered art is, like you said, mosaics, different kinds of patterns and calligraphy."

 

He adds, "The repeated patterns come from things I grew up with, like the repeated patterns on djellabas and the tiles on the floor and stuff like that."

 

But for all the clothes, colours, cans and patterns, Hajjaj’s photographs still come down to people. He started taking pictures of his friends because he wanted others to see the people and places around him.

 

He does not, however, want to tell viewers exactly what they are supposed to take from an image.

 

"I’m not really trying to convey too many messages," he says. "I always let the viewer make up their own mind about what the message is."

 

For Hajjaj, that can mean the same photograph is interpreted in completely different ways depending on who is looking at it.

 

"It could be because I’m Moroccan. Sometimes they see a picture and might look at it as Islamic, while sometimes I look at it and just think it’s cool. It could be the same image," he says.

 

"That image can be seen in five or 10 different ways by different people."

 

 

 

 

That freedom has become particularly interesting in London, where the people around Hajjaj come from all sorts of backgrounds.

 

His 'Rockstars' series grew out of this side of his life, with the artist photographing musicians and creatives he met around the city.

 

"A lot of my friends are from London, but they could be of Jamaican, Nigerian or Brazilian background," he says.

 

There was no big plan behind documenting this mix. Hajjaj was simply photographing what he saw around him.

 

"I wasn’t really trying to do something political," he says. "It was just something that was happening around me, and I was trying to capture that moment."

 

The 'Rockstars' series has been developing for around three years and has included a younger generation of musicians and artists. Central Cee is one of them.

 

For Hajjaj, the appeal was partly personal. He recognised something in the people he was photographing and wondered what he might have been doing if he were their age now.

 

"I was just sort of lucky enough to capture this new wave of, let’s say, creative people in London, and I saw myself in them," he says. 

 

"I thought, if I were their age, hopefully I’d be part of that kind of scene."

 

His relationship with his sitters has not changed much, even as the names have grown larger. Some shoots come through major publications, while others happen because somebody happens to walk through the right door at the right time.

 

His photograph of Billie Eilish came through Vogue. Hajjaj was asked to photograph her for the magazine, but the shoot turned into an opportunity for her to wear some of his clothes too.

 

"Billie Eilish was actually a shoot for Vogue, so I was asked to do a Vogue cover shoot with her," he says. "When I finished shooting her, they had their own stylist, makeup artist and hair team, and they asked if she could wear some of my stuff."

 

Central Cee was much less planned.

 

"He’s a friend of a friend of mine," Hajjaj says. "He happened to come to Morocco and came to my place. It was just the right surroundings, and something that happened naturally."

 

Then there was football. Hajjaj was asked to design a boot for Morocco captain Achraf Hakimi for AFCON, giving him another chance to bring Moroccan references into something completely different.

 

"I wanted to keep it Moroccan, with a North African style," he says. "So I used the kind of patterns you normally see on djellabas and incorporated them into the boot to keep that Moroccan feel."

 

For him, there is no need for every project to follow exactly the same formula.

 

"So each one really had a different avenue, different thoughts and different relationships," he says.

 

 

 

 

That idea of putting different people and places into spaces where they might not normally appear also carried over into his Hassan Hajjaj: My London Rockstars, Ends to Estates exhibition at Sotheby’s.

 

Hajjaj had originally been looking for somewhere a little different to show the work. He did not want to simply put the photographs into another gallery and call it a day.

 

"I didn’t want to really do it in the gallery," he says. "I was trying to find like an offbeat, interesting space to do it."

 

When Sotheby’s offered him the chance to show there, he decided it made sense. The photographs would not just be hanging on a wall; they would be bringing a group of people into a space they might not normally enter.

 

"The reason was to have these kinds of people hanging on the wall, taking over a space where they normally wouldn’t be invited or might not have the confidence to go inside," he says.

 

The reaction from his friends was telling. Some congratulated him because they saw the show as proof that he had “made it” at Sotheby’s. Others had a much more straightforward reaction: they had walked past the building for years but had never actually gone inside.

 

"There were a lot of people saying, ‘You know, Hassan, I’ve always walked past here, but I’ve never been inside. And my answer to them was, ‘That’s the reason you’re here. That’s the reason for this show.’"

 

 

 

 

Away from exhibitions, Hajjaj speaks about his Shoreditch shop. When he first got the space, he did not have a clear idea of what he wanted it to become.

 

"I didn’t know what I was going to do with it because it’s a dead street anyway," he says.

 

"But because I was already doing product, I needed a space to work from and somewhere to put my stuff, so I kind of opened it up to the public, but also use it as a studio."

 

Over time, it became a bit of everything: a shop, studio, office, meeting place, and a place for people to drop in.

 

"We use it as an office, as a meeting place, and really anybody’s welcome to come in as well," he says.

 

"It wasn’t really a plan from the beginning, and I’ve kind of kept it like that."

 

That lack of a strict plan seems to be part of the appeal. People come in because something catches their eye, and sometimes the conversation carries on from there.

 

"It gives me a chance to meet new people here," Hajjaj says. "Sometimes people just come in off the street, and because of the style of things I’m doing here, they’re often quite interesting people. They’ve taken an interest in something inside the shop, and I’ve met some great, great people here as well."

 

 

 

 

After photographing friends, artists, musicians and some of the biggest names in music, there is still no particular person Hajjaj is desperate to get in front of his camera.

 

When asked about his dream subject, he immediately throws out a couple of names.

 

"I could say Bob Marley, James Brown. I could name loads of people like that," he tells The New Arab.

 

"But I don’t really have a dream list. I just love shooting people when it happens naturally."

 

Nevertheless, for Hajjaj, there is certainly no shortage of new things happening.

 

He is preparing for an exhibition at the Philharmonie de Paris, opening on 21 September and running until April 2027, focused on musicians. He also has a group exhibition coming up in Parramatta, Sydney, as well as projects in Qatar and collaborations planned for next year.

 

But sitting in LARACHE, surrounded by the clothes, tins, crates and photographs that have become so recognisable as his, Hajjaj does not make his work sound particularly complicated.

 

"It’s really everything that I grew up with," he says. "That’s really me in that frame, in a sense, and my journey."

 

 

 

 

Zainab Mehdi is a British Iraqi journalist and the Associate Features Editor at The New Arab. She holds a BSc in Modern History and International Relations from the University of Essex and an MA in Near and Middle Eastern Studies from SOAS

 

 

For photos of Hassan's work, visit: https://www.newarab.com/features/hassan-hajjaj-andy-warhol-marrakech

 

AB/ANA/18 September 2026 - -