Hafiz
Sabiha Çimen
In her book, Hafiz, the Turkish photographer Sabiha Çimen (1986), portrayed students of Turkish Quran schools for girls. These are schools that teach the memorisation of the verses of the Quran. The girls are studying to achieve the title of ‘hafiz’. This would make them ‘guardians of Islam’.
Sabiha Çimen is a self-taught photographer. In her work she focuses on women, Islamic culture. portraits and still life. At the age of twelve she attended a Quran school herself. After graduation in 2001 her plans to attend college had to be postponed due to Turkey’s headscarf ban. From 1997 to 2013 the Turkish military, who seized power in 1980, banned headscarves from schools on the ground that they weren’t compatible with secularism. In these years Çimen became interested in photography.
For this project, Çimen spent three years photographing at five different schools in Turkey. At these schools the girls, who are between eight and nineteen years old, mainly spend their time memorising the Quran. Turkey has thousands of Quran schools. These traditions originate from the early days of Islam and is considered an important and honourable act of faith. Once the students are able to recite the 6.236 verses of the Quran they are given the title of hafiz.
The book reflects on the discipline needed to become a hafiz. It also shows the different stages of youth and adolescence which revolve around making friends, breaking the rules and the struggle of finding your own identity.
Çimen has managed to capture a glimpse of a world that outsiders are usually forbidden to see. Getting permits to photograph this world proved a challenge. But because she attented a Quran school herself she was eventually able to get access. With Hafiz she gives us an insight into the lives of these young women. The girls can be seen while visiting a fun fair, larking about, jointly hanging around in the schoolyard or gazing dreamily into space.
The book is beautifully bound in a unique pastel-pink case inscribed with a decorative motif that features tiny, lyrical illustrations of young girls in hijabs. The desing is meant to echo that of a Quran. It’s a nod to the content at hand. Touches like the exposed spine binding and marbleized endpapers made by Turkisch artists lend this book an almost magical quality.
Hafiz
Photographer : Sabiha Çimen
Publisher: Red Hook Editions
Published in 2021
Hardback/Open-spine binding with handmade Ebru Endpapers
20 x 27 cm, 140 pages, 99 medium-format color photographs
Chosen by people immersed in the photobook world as one of their favorite photobooks of 2022
Winner of the 2022 Paris Photo – Aperture First Photobook award