SHEDDING SKIN
In her series Shedding Skin, photographer Yumna Al-Arashi offers an intimate insight into communal hammam traditions.
The hammam is perhaps the oldest surviving bathing ritual in the world. In many majority-Muslim countries, it remains an essential social space. Al-Arashi conceived of her hammam series while on an assignment in Tunis, but ended up shooting the final images with women in Beirut.
Al-Arashi, who was born in the US to a Yemeni father and Egyptian mother, wanted to show the hammam as a healing and judgment-free space, counteracting its eroticized image in the West.
