abiha Çimen was twelve when, in 1998, she enrolled at a (guardian school) in Istanbul. Since 1970 more than 160,000 girls in Turkey, aged eight to nineteen, have studied in these single-sex schools, memorizing the Koran’s 6,236 verses, which takes around three years, and becoming protectors of Islam’s sacred book. Çimen’s upbringing made such a deep impression on her that, a quarter of a century later, these schools became the subject of (2021), her first photobook. Intensely intimate, Çimen’s portraits, made between 2017 and 2021, surveil the double lives religious students lead in contemporary Turkey, where it is legal for parents to send children
