Hasan & Husain Essop / Remembrance / 2012

In a new body of work, Hasan and Husain Essop explore the notion of memory, specifically in relation to the history and practice of religion. In a series of 360º panoramic photographs, each consisting of hundreds of individual photographs meticulously stitched together, they explore the history of various landscapes, searching for the memory of what came before and examining its effects on the captured moment. In a series of smaller photographs, they resume their trademark performance style, using their bodies, costumes, and a variety of poses to enter into a dialogue with the landscape, simultaneously documenting what is seen and creating a different narrative altogether.

The work is concerned with the notion of remembrance, and with the act of memorialising – particularly with reference to religious sites, ancient and modern – and with the tensions inherent in the act of photographing and recording memory; and the exhibition raises a number of important and topical question relating to history, heritage, religious identity, and the politics of place in the context of globalisation and xenophobia.

Tracing their travels to Mecca, Jerusalem, Amsterdam, Hamburg and Senegal, the photos seek to uncover and engage with the particular and unstable memories of each location – the birthplace of Islam in Mecca, inaccessible to most non-believers, and now paved over with parking lots and luxury hotel chains; the sacred sites of Jerusalem, fought over, destroyed and restored time and again for centuries; the ostensibly liberal cities of Western Europe, where paranoia, surveillance and religious profiling are becoming the new normal; and Dakar, where the legacies of slavery and colonialism gave rise to unique Islamic identities and practices, which are increasingly under assault by globalizing forces.