Boston-based contemporary photographer Claire Beckett has focused in-depth on American converts to Islam, a project catalyzed by the unfair, hostile treatment Muslims experienced in the United States post 9/11. Beckett made this portrait of Imam Taalib Mahdee after developing close relationships and gaining deep knowledge of Islam, which included meetings with American female converts to Islam. Here, the imam takes a moment of repose, his face turned towards the light, shirt sleeves rolled up. He wears a traditional prayer cap called a taqiyah. Beckett notes that her series, "The Converts," stems from questioning American identity: How do we understand the United States in relation to other nations and cultures? In a society that, however falsely, often constructs "American" and "Muslim" as diametrical opposites, what is the experience of people who have traversed this imagined line?

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