Human Highway
2012
Laserchrome print on KODAK real photopaper
140 × 210 cm
Laserchrome print on KODAK real photopaper
140 × 210 cm
Across hundreds of photographs and films, Desert of Pharan documents the rapid development of Islam’s holiest city, a place in a state of constant transformation. The shifting urban environment of the city is witnessed, as well as the lives lived amid the tumult. The title is taken from the ancient name for Mecca, or the wilderness and mountains surrounding it – the Desert of Paran, or Wilderness of Paran, mentioned in the Old Testament.
The project maps the tension between public and private space. While Mecca is home to more than a million residents, it is being transformed to cater to the needs of millions more pilgrims and tourists. Existing models of urban development have been implemented on a vast scale. Equipped with imported financial and development know-how, Mecca is attempting a transformation in order to adapt to the geopolitical, technological, environmental, geomorphological and religious context in which it exists.
In the city of Mecca, a new future is being drawn up. Its contours are becoming visible amidst a landscape teeming with initiatives – from the most public to the most private – aimed at developing and reinventing seemingly fixed rituals, states and assumptions; culminating, perhaps, in the re-imagining of life at the centre of the Islamic world.
This body of work asks: Is public space in the Islamic city becoming a luxury item? Is the courtyard becoming a commercial?
Moving east to west, pilgrims reenact Abraham’s hajj by throwing seven pebbles against each of three pillars, known collectively as jamarat. The area around the jamarat pillars, located in an encampment east of Mecca, has been redesigned repeatedly to facilitate pilgrims’ progression during the stone-throwing ritual. Hovering high above the entrance to the first pillar, we can sense both the significance of this rite and the considerable risk posed by the overwhelming mass of people funneling in. Hundreds have died trying to make their way across Jamarat Bridge. Ahmed Mater2012
Like few other cities on earth, Mecca seems to buckle under the weight of its own dramatic symbolism. Mecca is rarely seen as a living city with its own inhabitants and historical development. Instead, it is almost exclusively seen as a site of pilgrimage, as a timeless, emblematic city.
