Issue #29 / What's Next? / Hasan and Husain Essop

The brothers worked on five photographs, each brimful with collaged portraits of the twins doing various Muslim and non- Muslim things - washing, praying, attending a dogfight. Shot in a variety of non-descript locations in their native Cape Town, these early photos established the template for their subsequent practice. The Essop brothers' ongoing photographic project of self-representation refuses a lot of things: the monochrome sobriety of documentary; a stable view on the working class lives of many South African Muslims; sombreness.