This paper examines how Moroccan-born artist Lalla Essaydi’s photographs challenge traditional images of North African women in nineteenth-century Orientalist art and twentieth-century colonial photography. By re-defining and configuring the images of North African women in contemporary art, Essaydi debunks stereotypical images of Maghreb women while also creating a visual space and identity for artists such as herself who live and operate outside traditional North African societal and gender roles. Focusing on two of Essaydi’s photographic series, “Converging Territories” and “Les Femmes du Maroc,” I use these series to demonstrate how Essaydi’s photographs interrogate traditional depictions of North African women in visual culture. The fantasy-like stereotypes of Orientalist paintings exposed by Linda Nochlin in “The Imaginary Orient” are reconfigured “Les Femmes du Maroc,” as Essaydi clothes Ingres’ Grand Odalisque and the subjects of other famous Orientalist paintings in her re-casting of famous Western visions of exotic North African women. Likewise, in “Converging Territories,” Essaydi’s photographs of women in traditional scenes appear to re-imagine and dignify the women featured in twentieth-century Algerian colonial postcards while also questioning the traditional space and place of women in the harem problematized by Fatima Mernissi in 'Dreams of Trespass.' These confrontations and corrections are dramatized by Essaydi’s signature technique of covering her models and sets with layers of Arabic calligraphy executed in henna, employing traditional art and decorative forms to redefining traditional stereotypes. This subverted use of calligraphy is one of many ways Essaydi creates a space to reconsider the place and space of North African women in visual art. By giving the women words written across their clothing and faces they are nonetheless able to express themselves by “speaking” through the words written in henna. The calligraphy, which is Essaydi’s original poetry and prose, allows the artist an outlet for her own multi-faceted identity as a woman artist living and working outside the traditional spaces and places of women in North African society.