As the Veil Turns is a photography, video and oral history series about Black women who converted to Islam prior to 1975 and founded many of America's oldest still-existing Muslim communities. I photographed and interviewed the women in my mosque community to capture their stories and share their experiences from their own voices and perspectives.
I was inspired to create As the Veil Turns after an important elder in my Brooklyn mosque community died. On the way to her funeral, I packed into a car with some of her closest friends. Upon learning that I was an artist and filmmaker, their urged me to collect and preserve their stories knowing that their entire generation would soon pass on.
1975 was a critical time in the Black community because this marked the largest religious conversion in America when Elijah Muhammad died and his millions of followers collectively converted to Sunni Islam. The women who had identified as Muslims prior to this time came from a variety of religious expressions and they each shifted in their spiritual expression, visual expression, and sometimes even changed their names to outwardly claim their identities as Muslims during a time in America when very few people had even learned about Islam.
I chose to photograph my subjects in 35mm Black and White film to preserve the association of their representation with the notion of historical preservation. Each woman sits in a meditative or worshipful position associated with Islamic rituals of dhikr or salat.
Each As the Veil Turns limited edition photograph print is signed by the artist and numbered.
