Mustafa Dedeoğlu | Ashura

Photo © Mustafa Dedeoğlu-All Rights Reserved

I've seldom featured the work of Turkish photographers on this blog, but to redress this oversight here is the powerful photographs of Mustafa Dedeoğlu with monochromatic images of Ashura. It's also
about time that I featured black & white imagery after a surfeit of color that my blog has seen for the past few months.

Ashura is an Islamic holiday observed on the 10th of Muharram, the first month of the Islamic year. It's scheduled for October 12th in 2016. The word itself is derived from the number "10," denoting the date of the holiday. For the Shias, it commemorates a day of mourning for the death of Hussein ibn Ali, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, at the battle of Karbala. Shias consider Hussein the third Imam and the rightful successor to Muhammad, and the grief for his death is demonstrated by the self-flagellation in parades and other venues.

For Sunni Muslims, Ashura is occasionally observed by fasting as the Prophet Muhammad did, to commemorate the day when Moses and his followers were saved from the Pharaoh by God by creating a path in the Red Sea.

I'm itching to photograph Ashura in India, and was on the verge of setting out to do just so a year ago, but I've had to postpone it for another time due to conflicting schedules. It is one of the religious festivals that is intense, possibly blood curdling and not for the faint of heart. 

Mustafa Dedeoğlu was born in Istanbul and studied industrial engineering in Cyprus. His interest in photography started in 2006, and with time it has become his passion. Mustafa's work is published in various local and foreign titles on art. He also shares his creations through exhibitions, and has shown it in Russia, Spain, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Kosovo, Macedonia, America, Tehran and France.