Behind, A Camera In Front, A Hawza

A photographic exhibition by Massimiliano Fusari.

See inside the personal and social space of the Hawza, the Muslim Shi’a seminaries. The exhibition explores the Hawza as a scholarly institution and a place of learning, whose aims are the transmission and re-formulation of religious knowledge, the training of future religious experts and the scholarly and popular religious leadership of the Shiite community. It follows that the Hawza’s social relevance, both in religious and political terms, is crucial and unavoidable.

Photos were taken in Syria and Bahrain in 2010, just before the beginning of the uprisings in both countries.