God’s Place in Global Conflict through the Lens of One Magnum Photographer

“My relationship with God is professional,” says Abbas. “He doesn’t tell me what to do and I don’t tell him what to do. He has his believers.” That’s good enough for the single-named Magnum photographer. God is not Abbas’s vocation, but rather a major subject of his work, one that’s sent him across the globe to capture faith-based cultures and humanity in the throes of conflict—often turning his lens on their troubled interaction.

His reportage began during his formative years, which took place during the Algerian War of Independence (1954-62). But he didn’t turned toward the subject of religion until after covering his native Iran’s 1978-79 Islamic revolution. “Religion was of no interest to me. The Iran Revolution was,” he explains. But he “could see the waves of passion raised by the revolution were not going to stop at the borders.” Those waves of passion were the rising tides of Shia Iran, which led to a theocratic government replacing the Shah and his secular officials in power. The face of the revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, became nearly synonymous with Abbas’s portrait of him; the Ayatollah fills the frame, his brow furrowed. Since then, the photographer has gravitated toward religion’s many expressions.

Abbas has amassed an extensive body of material during the three and a half decades that he has framed faith—enough for quite a few books, including two tomes on Islam. Given this long exposure, one might think Abbas could provide answers or at least insight about the current climate of religious extremism in parts of the Middle East. Yet he says, “My aim is not give answers but ask questions,” by capturing “suspended moments.” 

In a new exhibition, on view at the University of Pennsylvania’s Arthur Ross Gallery through March 20, 2016, “Abbas: Children of Abraham,” the photographer presents 66 images in his first comprehensive series of the three kindred religions: Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. While the septuagenarian Abbas has been shooting these since the 1970s, our times call for introspection around both the ruptures and tensions that exist between the religions and their common ground. “Look what’s happening in the world—my god!” he exclaims, with a weary chuckle. The series expresses a narrative, one Abbas conjured from his archives, though he won’t put words to the story’s arc, preferring that viewers use their eyes. “For me, photography is photo-graphy—writing with light,” he says. 

Even the most intimate of the photographer’s images—some digital, most silver gelatin shot on 35mm or 50mm cameras—are arresting. In a 1987 portrait, a woman in full Niqab hovers over a microscope with spectacles balanced atop her facial veil. A family mourns the death of President Gamal Abdel NASSER (1970), an image of a woman and her family framed in a Cairo window, echoes Rembrandt’s Syndics of the Drapers’ Guild (1662). (Abbas captured the image spontaneously while passing and made the art-historical connection years later.) In another image, a Cuban woman holds up a bible, in 1997, before proselytizing the faith.

“I have to understand what’s happening there,” Abbas says. “When I photograph people, I’m not interested in the person but what they represent.” This may seem like a cold calculation, but that critical distance is both a fact of the photographer occupying a position as outsider, and a necessary survival mechanism. “You can never become the other—you can only pretend to become the other,” he explains.  “Even then, if you’re immersed a long time, you have the option of leaving. They don’t.” Among the numerous communities Abbas has temporarily embedded himself within are Chinese Muslims, Ethiopian Jews, and Minnesota evangelists. “You have to be able to operate, put an emotional curtain between what’s happening and you,” Abbas says. “It doesn’t mean you don’t feel it, but you keep it inside.”