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Lucki Islam is a recent high school graduate and a student of the Bronx Junior Photo League, a program of the Bronx Documentary Center. The photos shown here were made during her junior year. |
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The Sun Will Still Rise, but So Will The Moon
Ramadan is a spiritual experience. Trying to capture Ramadan in isolation has been a unique process in which I have been trying to reflect the image of life that is imposed on us during this time. In photographing my family, I have also been reflecting on my own spiritual journey, and what it has meant for me. This is the first Ramadan that has solely felt lonely, despite being in a full house because of COVID-19. As time stands still, and at the same time escapes us, I want the viewers to feel like they are in the same moment as me.
Empty stomachs till sunset,
But souls are filled with content.
Prayer- an outlet,
No regrets when your faith is being tested.
It takes discipline to carry a light heart.
Ramadan- a blooming flower, not the end, always a fresh start.
Facing our gaze inwards,
Forgetting our ego and getting rid of the idea that we’re all sinners.
The gates of heaven are open now,
But it feels like the devil is still sitting next to me somehow.
I remember the heat on my skin when the summer sun was born.
I remember the unbearable humidity as my friends and I complain trying to find shade or a small bit of breeze.
I remember all the snacks I'd save up throughout the day, so my fast was broken with a crazy amount of sour patch kids, granola bars, and goldfish.
And then the days go by, and the gates to heaven close.
I remember now as I lounge in front of the only window I can get fresh air from has been my only escape.
I remember feeling like there was a revolution happening inside of me-
I remember now that my heart still feels heavy-
Even though the hours were shorter than last year
I remember feeling afraid because we only feel scared when we have something to lose.
The new moon is around the corner.
My heart is racing, but I am ready to continue fighting.
I have divorced my spirit from my body.
I am grateful for all the truths I’ve learned and have yet to learn, about myself, and the world.
So no, I cannot tell you what lies ahead.
But know that you are free to open your heart to peace, despite the uncertainties for the next day.
You are free to hold both happiness and sorrow.
You are free to challenge truths, while also being gentle with yourself.
You are free to love, and receive love despite any feelings of unworthiness.
You are free to grace the earth with light feet, no matter what tragedies you are leaving behind.
You deserve to take up space, right here in this very moment, no different, but just as you are.
You are the moon, so you do not think you can be as powerful as the sun.
You have loved so much that for all the souls you considered of being your sun, you lost parts of yourself every night so that they can shine brighter.
But one day you will learn that it is not impossible to coexist in the same world.
There is more than enough room for that because in the end,
The Sun Will Still Rise, but So Will the Moon.
Empty stomachs till sunset,
But souls are filled with content.
Prayer- an outlet,
No regrets when your faith is being tested.
It takes discipline to carry a light heart.
Ramadan- a blooming flower, not the end, always a fresh start.
Facing our gaze inwards,
Forgetting our ego and getting rid of the idea that we’re all sinners.
The gates of heaven are open now,
But it feels like the devil is still sitting next to me somehow.
I remember the heat on my skin when the summer sun was born.
I remember the unbearable humidity as my friends and I complain trying to find shade or a small bit of breeze.
I remember all the snacks I'd save up throughout the day, so my fast was broken with a crazy amount of sour patch kids, granola bars, and goldfish.
And then the days go by, and the gates to heaven close.
I remember now as I lounge in front of the only window I can get fresh air from has been my only escape.
I remember feeling like there was a revolution happening inside of me-
I remember now that my heart still feels heavy-
Even though the hours were shorter than last year
I remember feeling afraid because we only feel scared when we have something to lose.
The new moon is around the corner.
My heart is racing, but I am ready to continue fighting.
I have divorced my spirit from my body.
I am grateful for all the truths I’ve learned and have yet to learn, about myself, and the world.
So no, I cannot tell you what lies ahead.
But know that you are free to open your heart to peace, despite the uncertainties for the next day.
You are free to hold both happiness and sorrow.
You are free to challenge truths, while also being gentle with yourself.
You are free to love, and receive love despite any feelings of unworthiness.
You are free to grace the earth with light feet, no matter what tragedies you are leaving behind.
You deserve to take up space, right here in this very moment, no different, but just as you are.
You are the moon, so you do not think you can be as powerful as the sun.
You have loved so much that for all the souls you considered of being your sun, you lost parts of yourself every night so that they can shine brighter.
But one day you will learn that it is not impossible to coexist in the same world.
There is more than enough room for that because in the end,
The Sun Will Still Rise, but So Will the Moon.
“Prayer is not asking,
It is a longing of the soul.
It is daily admission
Of one’s weakness.
It is better in prayer-
to have a heart without words.
Than words without a heart.”
-Mahatma Gandhi. Bronx, New York, May 2, 2020. © Lucki Islam / Bronx Documentary Center
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Before quarantine, my dad would always get home after 4 am. Now, however, he is always home, until he gets tired of being indoors and looks for excuses to go outside like grocery shopping. I remember when I was younger I was very close with my dad. As I got older, things changed. My mom began to tell me to cover my chest, cover this, cover that. “Tor goro baf ar baye, shoril gurya thakis.” You live in a house with grown brothers and a dad, you need to make sure you cover yourself. There’s always a sense of frustration and anger I have towards my dad, but more so men. As if they get to dictate what I wear and don’t. He yelled at me countless times for not wearing the shawl in front of him. My blood would boil. Islam does not condone misogyny, but I think instead of blaming my parents for their ignorance, I blamed God. But I know now that there is no doubt that Islam gives the most honor to women. I’d like to think my parents truly don’t know any better. But I wonder how long I can stay angry with him sometimes. Bronx, New York, May 8, 2020. © Lucki Islam / Bronx Documentary Center
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Ama opened the kitchen window for the first time in a while. Ramadan began this year on April 24. For a moment it felt like I could taste heaven from the refreshing breeze that danced into the room. As the dust particles danced with the falling light, so did my heart. Bronx, New York, April 28, 2020. © Lucki Islam / Bronx Documentary Center
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Truth in Photography: In your photographs, it’s really about the private lives of the people who are your subjects. They are very intimate, they are very revealing. For you, where does the truth lie in your photographs?
Lucki Islam: A lot of my truth honestly comes from just how I feel. I feel like everything that I do has to come from how I feel. If it doesn’t come from how I feel, then it’s not real to me, if that makes sense. It could be a good and bad thing. I do a lot of things that are driven by my emotions. And I found that specifically when I was photographing Ramadan during this time there were obviously a lot of emotions for me, with the pandemic and just with my family in general. I think growing up a lot of the times, not that my truth was silenced, but I was always told what I believe or what I think is not true. And I think hearing that a lot for me growing up was kind of difficult, so I think through photography and writing in general, that’s me telling my truth. That’s me telling how I feel, because for most of my life, what I felt was wrong, or what I believed was not the right thing to believe. And I think ultimately what a person feels is the truth. A lot of our emotions, like anger, like sadness, we feel those things for a reason. So when you feel those things, another person can’t tell you, “Oh, you’re not hurt by this,” or “You can’t feel sad about this,” because those are my emotions. That’s how I feel. And that’s my truth, you know? And so I think definitely, the photography is one way of portraying things like it is. But also I feel it goes deeper than that. There are a lot of things that we feel, and the truth goes beyond what’s on the surface to me. TiP: The people in your photographs are your family. How did they feel about you making the photographs? Islam: Honestly, it was very challenging to photograph them because I never felt comfortable photographing my family. Like home, I think family is something that’s also very private. And when I chose to photograph my family, I was choosing to let other people into that world. I know my mom definitely does not like to be photographed. So I had to find other ways to show who she is, but in a way she was also comfortable. There is a photo that I think a lot of people liked when my whole family was just sleeping on the bed. To me that’s literally how I grew up all my life. We all sleep together. |
My Grandma always tells me that “prayer is better than sleeping.” Now I understand where my insomnia comes from, but her mind is always restless- she is always thinking about her kids, the future, and even life after death. Prayer for her is an outlet, a way to release her thoughts to the one person she knows will understand and guide her- God.
When I am unable to sleep at night, I can open up my prayer mat. Happy when my prayers are answered, but even happier when they are unanswered because that path wasn’t meant for me. Rather, there is an even better path waiting for me. Bronx, New York, May 18, 2020. © Lucki Islam / Bronx Documentary Center
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After a long night of staying up for suhoor (last meal before dawn), my mom and brothers were fast asleep. I usually have trouble sleeping at night so I’m left to catch up with the thoughts and unanswered questions in my head. We either wish for the nights to never end or for the morning to come as quickly as possible. Either way, the sun will still rise. And I will rise with the sun. Bronx, New York, May 7, 2020. © Lucki Islam / Bronx Documentary Center
But that’s not normal. It’s not a normal thing for siblings to sleep on the same bed together. Literally I have three younger brothers, so again that’s not something you see very often. But I remember taking that, and I was like, “This is very intimate. This is my truth. This is what I deal with, what I live with.” And I know when I showed my mom that picture she was like, “Why are you taking pictures of us sleeping?” A lot of what I did, they didn’t understand at first until I talked to them about it. I was just like, “Mom, this is just me documenting how this Ramadan is, because it’s very different from how I’ve spent it.” I’ve never really paid attention to what it meant, in general. And so capturing those quiet moments for me was important because I focus a lot on the loud moments, in my head at least. But I love the quiet moments because I feel like that’s my truth. In those quiet moments, that’s what’s happening for me.
I read somewhere once that being noticed by someone feels so close to being loved that sometimes they feel the same. I remember the last time I was about this close to someone I loved. I never experience nausea being around someone. My stomach was flipping and turning, my legs were shaking, and the adrenaline was clear on my face. Sometimes you can get addicted to a certain feeling.
Temptations. That’s what Ama would’ve called it. “Sins do not arise until the heart becomes vulnerable.” So maybe in those moments, my heart was vulnerable. We as humans are presented with different trials in life. When a heart absorbs thus trial, a black spot is blotched on it. When the heart deflects a trial, a white dot is spotted. I wonder if my heart is blackened. Love is life’s greatest trial, after all, isn’t it? Bronx, New York, May 4, 2020. © Lucki Islam / Bronx Documentary Center
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I look at my baby cousins, and always think to myself: What I would give to be a child again. To never feel the worries and expectations of the world on my shoulders. To think that we have so much time ahead of us. I look at my baby cousins, and I hope they don’t have to grow up as fast as I did. Bronx, New York, May 8, 2020. © Lucki Islam / Bronx Documentary Center
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One of the most painful things in life is witnessing the people who love and take care of us get older. However, my Grandma, only being in her late 50s, is as resilient as a young child. Being in quarantine has been challenging for her as well because she feels like she has been stuck in her mind lately. When she’s on her feet, she’s unstoppable. Bronx, New York, May 18, 2020. © Lucki Islam / Bronx Documentary Center
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Every story is important in the Quran. They each individually make the Quran what it is as a whole. This picture shows one of the chapters- Ayatul Kursi. This chapter is about protection. If you recite it twice, God sends two groups of Angels to protect you. If you recite it three times, then God tells the Angels not to worry as he, himself protects that person. Sometimes I wish to protect others more than myself. But sometimes you can’t protect what doesn’t want to be protected. All you can do is make sure your heart is protected from people like that. Bronx, New York, May 7, 2020. © Lucki Islam / Bronx Documentary Center
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“If the Earth needs the Sun for its light,
then the heart should crave for light too.” - The Qur'an. Bronx, New York, May 15, 2020. © Lucki Islam / Bronx Documentary Center
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I went to my Grandma's house today for the first time since quarantine started. There was a mix of emotions in the atmosphere. Messy emotions resembled by the mess of sandals and slippers in the hallway as we walked in. Life is messy. But it’s the mess that has made me who I am today. And for that, I think I have grown to accept the messiness of life, and in a weird way, admire it. Bronx, New York, May 8, 2020. © Lucki Islam / Bronx Documentary Center
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TiP: In terms of the work that you do, what is your process for making photographs? Your photographs have an intimacy, but they have a certain feeling of respect as well for the world around you.
Islam: Honestly, when I started this project, I really didn’t know what I was doing at all. I’ve never been used to photographing at home. Obviously, my life to me is normal. But other people didn’t perceive it that way. My normal is not somebody else’s normal, and I think that was the challenging part for me because I see the same thing everyday. So I try to be in different spaces in my home, and just capture what was going on in that moment. A lot of it had to do with how I was feeling. So a lot of the time I would just stand by the window, I had my own corner, you know. When I was in that corner, I observed a lot of things. If it was my family praying, I would get up and go to photograph them, or if we were in the kitchen, I tried to wait for those moments where I saw my brother grabbing food. It’s moments that are just normal, but are not normal, if that makes sense. And I don’t think I really had a specific process. I think it just depended on how I felt in the moment, what was happening. After I took the photos, that’s when I thought about my writing. Because a lot of my writing has to do with how I feel. When I do captions, I feel like a lot of people, they put the details and everything, but I just kind of write it as if it was a diary. I feel like diaries are so personal, and I love writing and journaling. When I want people to come into my world, I kind of want to show them how it is. I don’t know how to explain it. My process is very personal to me and who I am. I know there’s a huge audience that could see that, but I don’t think about that. I just think about if it was for me only. That’s how I go about my process.
Islam: Honestly, when I started this project, I really didn’t know what I was doing at all. I’ve never been used to photographing at home. Obviously, my life to me is normal. But other people didn’t perceive it that way. My normal is not somebody else’s normal, and I think that was the challenging part for me because I see the same thing everyday. So I try to be in different spaces in my home, and just capture what was going on in that moment. A lot of it had to do with how I was feeling. So a lot of the time I would just stand by the window, I had my own corner, you know. When I was in that corner, I observed a lot of things. If it was my family praying, I would get up and go to photograph them, or if we were in the kitchen, I tried to wait for those moments where I saw my brother grabbing food. It’s moments that are just normal, but are not normal, if that makes sense. And I don’t think I really had a specific process. I think it just depended on how I felt in the moment, what was happening. After I took the photos, that’s when I thought about my writing. Because a lot of my writing has to do with how I feel. When I do captions, I feel like a lot of people, they put the details and everything, but I just kind of write it as if it was a diary. I feel like diaries are so personal, and I love writing and journaling. When I want people to come into my world, I kind of want to show them how it is. I don’t know how to explain it. My process is very personal to me and who I am. I know there’s a huge audience that could see that, but I don’t think about that. I just think about if it was for me only. That’s how I go about my process.
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TiP: What did you hope would be the outcome of your photos? What were you trying to communicate, and how did you hope that others would respond to it?
I definitely did not have the intention to share it with people in that large-scale sense. In our program, we do our end of the year exhibition project. If we were not in the pandemic, we would have this project to show to our community and anybody could come and see what the students have been working on. So that was really my main goal, to get that project done. Around this time my parents had Covid. It was just a hard time. It was for me personally to document how this time or season was very different from any other year. I wanted to use this project to gain a deeper connection with my family. I really don’t talk to them that much about life in general. I forget that they’re not side characters in my life. It was definitely a way for me to understand what Ramadan meant to me. Religion is a very difficult thing for a lot of people, and for me personally, I’ve been trying to figure out what it means to me. Not that I wanted to connect with my religion more, but I wanted to understand what a lot of these things mean to me. I was tired of other people telling me what things should mean to me. I really didn’t think that a lot of people would see my project in a larger sense. |
The Rooftop. A getaway from the world beneath us. People are like roofs. When you begin to know someone, you see the beautiful garden. You see them in such a perfect light that you forget there are also dark alleys. You forget that we are all humans and that there is more to them than what you see and what they show you. But this doesn’t scare me. I’m scared of discovering their roof. Their place of escape from the world. Bronx, NY. May 24, 2020. © Lucki Islam / Bronx Documentary Center
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TiP: What are your goals? What do you want to do next?
I think photography is always going to be a part of my life. Whether I want to pursue it as a profession, I’ve always found comfort in photographing my friends and my family, just literally capturing those moments. I remember my parents, they videotaped my siblings and us growing up. But I know that my footage got lost. I’m really not sure why. I would always be so frustrated with it. I was like, “Wow, so you have a video of my brothers growing up, but I’m a toddler and I still have nothing?” I love videotaping these moments. Even if it’s just for fun. I post videos on YouTube just to look back and be like, “Okay, this is how I spent this month.” For me, it’s always about looking back and reflecting on how far I’ve come, to be honest. I really love filmmaking, I think that is something I want to look into in the future. I really love telling my truth. I love storytelling. Whether that’s through photography or theatre or art, that’s kind of what I want to do. I just want to tell stories. And if photography is one way I could do that, then I would love to do that.
I think photography is always going to be a part of my life. Whether I want to pursue it as a profession, I’ve always found comfort in photographing my friends and my family, just literally capturing those moments. I remember my parents, they videotaped my siblings and us growing up. But I know that my footage got lost. I’m really not sure why. I would always be so frustrated with it. I was like, “Wow, so you have a video of my brothers growing up, but I’m a toddler and I still have nothing?” I love videotaping these moments. Even if it’s just for fun. I post videos on YouTube just to look back and be like, “Okay, this is how I spent this month.” For me, it’s always about looking back and reflecting on how far I’ve come, to be honest. I really love filmmaking, I think that is something I want to look into in the future. I really love telling my truth. I love storytelling. Whether that’s through photography or theatre or art, that’s kind of what I want to do. I just want to tell stories. And if photography is one way I could do that, then I would love to do that.
(click on an image to see it larger and view its caption)
