Are Saudi Women Religious?
On the absence of prayer and observance in Lynsey Addario’s photos in Saudi Arabia
WHEN Lynsey Addario landed in Saudi Arabia to photograph Saudi women for National Geographic, I imagine she had already considered a couple of dilemmas. Firstly, she may have wondered what she might add to the visual conversation on women in Saudi Arabia. (Especially as Olivia Arthur’s Jeddah Diary raised the bar so high, so responsibly.)
Secondly, Addario would have noted the elephant in the room — religion. Without coming on too strong, how would she depict Saudi Arabia’s particular interpretation of Islam and Islamic law that makes the lives of Saudi women so distinct from those of other women in the Arab world? Some of the answers lie in The Changing Face of Saudi Women a National Geographic article by Cynthia Gorney accompanied by Addario’s photographs.
As to the answer to the first question, Addario brought a new level of vibrance and color to a people who have otherwise been portrayed as quiet and subdued. Addario’s kick-ass Saudi women put on fashion shows, go off-roading in the desert, blast American hip-hop and literally kick ass in kickboxing classes. Olivia Arthur does a fantastic job capturing powerful, quiet moments, but what Addario brought to this story is exactly what it needed: Energy.
The second question, though — about how to handle Saudi religion — is a bit trickier. What I noticed immediately from Addario’s edit is the absence of personal religious moments; her subjects appear to observe few if any distinctively Islamic practices on camera: no prayers, no Islamic rituals, no socializing at the mosque. Perhaps sensing that we’ve seen enough of that sort of thing in stories about Saudi Arabia, Addario and her editors decided to focus on scenes from everyday life that illustrate the influence of the House of Saud’s quasi-religious institutions over individual religious experiences. This seemed to echo her approach to Afghani women in her series Veiled Rebellion.
It’s possible that the women Addario spent her time with just weren’t all that religious. If that’s the case, then of course I’m glad she didn’t try to fabricate a religion angle that wasn’t there … but I can’t help leaving this story without wondering if prayer, ritual, and religious identification didn’t at least have some role in the lives of these women.
Surely, a few of the women Addario photographed in Saudi Arabia, even from the younger generation, were least somewhat observant of their faith. As a reader I want to see these observances because I want to know if there is more to Saudi religion than wearing the abaya and the niqab; I want to see how submission to God informs one’s identity as both a Saudi and a woman. This involves the difficult task of confronting and transcending the generic depictions of Islamic piety that are already overdone, but I don’t think it means going out of one’s way to avoid religion altogether.
This is especially true given this story’s focus on “modernization,” a risky term that comes up periodically in the text. While author Cynthia Gorney and her editors are careful not to imply that “modernization” actually means something like “westernization” or “de-orientalizing,” it’s important to clarify that it doesn’t necessarily mean “secularization” either. It might have that connotation outside of Saudi Arabia, but I doubt it does for most Saudis.
It’s also possible, given the characters we meet in the text, that the subjects themselves didn’t want to be portrayed as stereotypically religious and therefore self-censored their religious practices while they were around Addario. That makes it even more important to accept the challenge to publish more authentic and nuanced images of religious observance that add new layers of depth to the visual index of religion. Addario has done this before, and she is one of the few photographers up to the task.
Originally published at kcmcginnis.com.
