More often than not, the success of a shoot hinges on a photographer’s ability to connect with her subject, even when the chips are stacked solidly against her. So was the case for the photographer Rena Effendi, who we commissioned to photograph the Egyptian politician Ahmed Khalil Khairallah, a hard-line Islamist, for last week’s profile by Wendell Steavenson. Effendi is culturally Muslim by virtue of having grown up in Azerbaijan, but religion never played any role in her upbringing, which was shaped largely by her father’s belief that if science couldn’t prove it, it didn’t exist. Or, as Effendi succinctly put it, “I am a supposed-to-be-Muslim-post-Soviet-westernized-eastern female atheist.”
This identity was on Effendi’s mind as she travelled from Cairo to meet her subject. “Because of my lack of religious upbringing,” she told me, “I panicked on the train to Alexandria, sitting in my long dress and thinking of all kinds of possible awkwardness with my potential subject—and me having to overcome it to win his trust as a photographer. What if he asks me who I am?”
When Effendi finally met Khalil in Alexandria, he was busy, but extremely polite. However, he did not feel comfortable being photographed, and Effendi often ended up staring at his back. “He turned away from me involuntarily and moved swiftly along talking to people on the street. After each camera click, he kept asking: ‘Khalas?’ which in Arabic means, ‘Are you finished? Done?’ I looked over and said: ‘Please try to forget that I am here. Just imagine that I am an Egyptian fly, hovering around you.’ This made him laugh. From the garden, Khalil went back to the streets. He was more relaxed this time, and I finally got a picture of him talking to a female constituent in a dark veil. His face was lively with expression, and the sun shone on the edge of the woman’s head, casting off bright beams; it looked as though he was passing on to her some majestic light of wisdom. Then I thought about the question of my religion, one that had been hanging above me all day; luckily or not, we never got to talking about God.”
Photographs by Rena Effendi/Institute.
