The Call of Cairo

The Call of Cairo- an exhibition of photographs from the feature documentary film, CAIRO IN ONE BREATH Photographs by Anna Kipervaser, David Degner, Jeremy Johnson, and Meredith Zielke, and edited by Rodion Galperin. It happened to be Ramadan when On Look Films took their first production trip to Cairo in August of 2009. Over the course of these several years, the On Look Films team has been documenting the transformation of the 1,400 year-old tradition of the adhan as a government plan to systemize the call to prayer was being implemented. The Adhan Unification Project proposed to replace the thousands of individual muezzins who had been reciting the adhan five times each day with a single muezzin's voice broadcast live from a central radio station to wireless receivers installed in all of Cairo's officially recognized mosques. CAIRO IN ONE BREATH follows muezzins from when they first heard rumors of plans to install wireless receivers through two years after implementation of the AUP, which has displaced thousands of employees and volunteers. Now, most mosques have receivers installed, though political changes have halted inspection and maintenance. This exhibition is sponsored by the John Hope Franklin Center, Duke Islamic Studies Center, Duke University Middle East Studies Center, Center for Muslim Life, and the Rethinking Global Cities Project, an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation project.