This project aims to be a constantly ongoing journey inside the world of Islam in France, the religious multidirectional relationships and the many faces that compose this complex multilayered reality built by long years of racial, political, cultural, and even spiritual issues in a troubled geopolitical context. This project is a represention of the many paths followed by different sectors of the population and their intersections, and looks to better understand the relations between the different actors of a fractured and compartmentalized France. Through audiovisual mixed media documentation made of traditional photojournalism, still lifes, interventions of images, portraits and some other documentary approaches the work looks to put together, in a very personal way, lives and stories many times seen as parallel, but that play a very important role in the collective life of the country but even more at the micro local context where communities are under the hovering shadow of Islamophobia, of far right racist ideologists, religious radicalization, antisemitism, and a wide range of extreme ideas. A reflection about a society as a puzzle where its pieces are not always fitting together in order to find a form that better integrates all these elements and contribute to the construction of a more auto-critical, inclusive and self-aware society.
The name of this project is a reference to the symbols that represent the largest monotheistic religions. Each symbol can be used to represent history, culture, knowledge, spiritual quests and celebrate diversity or to create division and hatred amongst people in the name of supossed sacred and invisible superior forces. "The Void" is that place in the middle that is unknown, rarely discussed, and is underappreciated. It could be a neutral zone or, even better, an area of convergence and respect, but it is instead a place where we throw our fear, intolerance and ignorance.
This project has been developed with the support of MAGNUM FOUNDATION - On Religion Program. For a complete view of this essay please visit www.thecrescentproject.com
