JUST as the Institut du Monde Arabe (IMA) in Paris has chosen to devote to Makkah an important photographic retrospective (1) of the first photos taken of the sacred Muslim holy place in its excellent exhibition on “Photographies anciennes de la Mecque et de Medine 1880-1947,” the French capital city is doubly blessed with a second spectacular exposition on Makkah, this time as it is today, in an exhibit of the most recent work of Saudi photographer Reem Al-Faisal, simply (and humbly) called “Haj.” (2)
And, as in her previous (Sept. 2003) Paris exhibition, “The Divine Presence” — also housed at the prestigious Galerie Agathe Gaillard in the fourth arrondissement of the appropriately named City of Light — as well as in her excellent album “Diwan Al-Noor” (3), Reem Al-Faisal has demonstrated once again not only her artist’s humility, but also her uncanny ability at seeing so very much in what at first glance would appear to be so very little, pedestrian and commonplace, at removing with the intensity of her tried-and-tested photographer’s eye a veil that had perhaps hidden from human view something truly divine that until now had unfortunately escaped our attention, obscured our view of this all-important of events.
So revelatory that you might call Reem Al-Faisal a poet of the shadows, for she has done something that few masters of her craft have ever managed to accomplish: Show that the shadow has nothing negative about it, that it is a most positive trait, there existing so much more behind an image than is apparent.
She has managed to push black-and-white photography to its limits, recalling that “each photograph is a sample of light and of shadow,” obviously having followed the recommendation of Henri Matisse that the artist see the world in its quintessential nature, its purity, “as if with the eyes of a child.” If she were Lewis Carroll’s Alice, Reem Al-Faisal could be said to have definitively taken us through the mirror and behind to a never-never land unknown to common mortals, introduced us to a netherworld little visited by those deprived of the good fortune of having Reem Al-Faisal as our guide.
For, as the IMA exhibition well proves in its own way, the Haj has become through the years a most extraordinary and complex phenomenon of the Islamic world, but also of all mankind, an event which, when captured by the likes of Muhammad Sadic Bey (in 1880) or Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (1885), and today by Reem Al-Faisal, and when above all done in black and white (so revelatory of the intensity of Islam and of the experience of the Haj as unveiled in the two exhibits that this writer wonder whether color is perhaps highly inappropriate to providing a photographic record of Makkah and its annual pilgrimage), may seem at first glance so very simple, but how intricately complex when you start focusing your attention on what goes on behind the appearance of the annual Haj.
French author Andre Malraux had once said of one of his contemporaries, a little-known poet, that he “chiseled away at words as with the sculptor’s cisaille,” which is why one wonders whether in addition to being a poet of the shadows, Reem Al-Faisal is not also a sculptor of light, for she’s become, especially since her last Paris exhibit of 2003 — a process moreover that one perceives in “Diwan Al-Noor” — so masterly at working with light and shadow — all the while maintaining her humility and childlike spirit — that she now seems to manage to extract light from the shadows.
As in one of the best photographs in the “Haj” exhibit — this writer’s favorite, in any case — where a group of pilgrims are photographed before their tents, and in the sky there appear two otherwise insignificant globes of light, but photographed by someone so knowing of her art, but also of the event she is attempting to capture — that no other photographer, outside perhaps of someone of the greatness of Brassai, who if he were living would surely have appreciated Reem Al-Faisal’s work — would have thought of photographing not so much the pilgrims down below as the phantasmagoric circles of light up above, that end up saying much more about the Haj than any otherwise ephemeral human presence.
Not for anything is it that Reem Al-Faisal says “in my art I like to show the signs of the Divine in nature and in man. For me, light is one of the numerous manifestations of God, that he projects on our path to recall to us his constant presence within ourselves and everywhere. Each photograph is a sample of light and of shadow.”
Nor is it so unusual that in prefacing Reem Al-Faisal’s magnificent book of images, “Diwan Al-Noor”, Gamal Al-Gaitany declares unabashedly “in Reem Al-Faisal’s world all solidity is a reflection of the light which gives it form and content. The orb is round because of the light that curls around it. The archway is tall because of the light which streams through it. Color is only a distraction. By working in black-and-white the artist sees and renders to us the Divine light of her vision.”
But let us accord to Reem Al-Faisal the last word, when she describes in her own special way her “Haj” experience — a condensation, moreover, of the event over a four-year period: “The Haj is a congregation of three million men and women speaking more than two hundred languages and many more dialects. They come from all continents and all classes and that was my primary interest in photographing this event that takes place every year at the same place with the same ritual which they all have to perform at the same time in four days no more no less.
“It is a human laboratory which I could study in it the human behavior when confronted with each other in a foreign country and with strange people which they will have to learn to live with each other in such a short period of time. “The Haj is a demanding experience both physically and mentally and it was not any less demanding to me as an observer since I had to face many challenges of trying to perceived as an intruder in such a private moment of meditation.
“All I can say is being a woman demanded far more of me and taught me my own limitation and also my strengths and how to deal with incomprehension and sometimes even violence but mostly it was an enriching time.”