The photographer

Hud Wahab

I am Hud Wahab, a Malaysian photographer.

I have chased higher education across four continents. Malaysia, Germany, Australia, the United States. Everywhere I landed I ended up in the local mosque, and that habit turned into an archive.

The range is the thing that gets me. In Malaysia I have stood under domes so wide the span from edge to edge runs the length of an Olympic swimming pool. In Germany I have prayed in a Hinterhofmoschee, a backyard mosque, tucked into a courtyard out of sight because a visible one would have drawn objection.

Same religion. Opposite architecture. One built to be seen from the motorway, one built not to be seen at all.

What has stayed constant is smaller and harder to photograph. It does not matter whether you are white, black, Arab or Asian. You walk into a mosque anywhere on earth and you know the shape of what happens next. You know where to put your shoes, which direction to face, what the person beside you is doing and why. Nobody asks where you are from.

I have not found that to be true of every faith. Plenty of traditions splinter hard along culture and practice, to the point that two congregations under the same banner would not recognise each other's service.

That is what I am actually photographing. Not the buildings. The thing the buildings hold steady across every continent I have carried a camera through.