HOZOUR

Hozour documents the Achura ceremony (the celebration of the martyrdom of Muhammad’s grandson, Hussein) in a small town near Ispahan, Khasar, that is relatively uninhabited the rest of the year. It observes and assembles in a compact fashion a huge wave of people, a powerful surge of collective energy. One thousand five hundred kilos of meat, seven thousand guests… Even without the figures, what is striking is that the inexorable routine of a familiar ritual nonetheless gives the impression that it exudes something exceptional. Avoiding the trap of a parallel editing that uses discourse or metaphor, there is a discreet interplay between the processions of men lashing themselves and the meat being washed in hot water, between the faithful weeping at the mosque and the onions being peeled, between the oversized religious portraits and the epically sized pots of abgoosht, the ritual dish. This influx of people, food and cutlery underlines not only the participants’ generosity at the festival, where bringing food and cooking food constitute a religious good deed, but also the exaggerated dimensions of scale and practice. (Charlotte Garson)