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.

“These images do not wish to produce a definitive statement. Rather, I wish to suggest an interpretative path, so absolutely personal as the gaze is definitely mine, for the fascinating universe of the Hawza, a school, a social system a space of knowledge. I look for photography that stays incomplete and unfinished, as to me images are permanently experienced, and completed by their interaction with audiences: by offering an unfinished path, I wish audiences will feel the need to engage with my work, and by doing so, experience, explore, challenge and question not only the represented subject and its author, but themselves too. What do you see, but much more importantly, how do you feel?” Massimiliano Fusari, 2013

U.K. based Italian photographer Massimiliano Fusari is an established photojournalist and media consultant for international agencies and media companies, with a specific working background in the sensitive and often challenging area of Islamic Studies. Massimiliano will shortly complete his PhD on current processes of photographic and multimedia signification.