Paper short abstract:

This presentation will be on the process of gaining access to religious women spaces and how the camera played an important role in the whole process.

Paper long abstract:

Before going to fieldwork, I always found it useful to read other researchers' accounts on how they gained access and what type of negotiations they had to do. A researcher cannot always anticipate what type of challenges can happen especially if their fieldwork topic changes while still in the process of conducting the research.

In this presentation, I will share my experience of doing fieldwork with a camera among pious Shia women artists in Kuwait. Gaining access to religious spaces may not be necessarily difficult but when a camera is introduced, it can change so many factors. I will be presenting some of the challenges that I faced and how I dealt with them. I will also tackle the question of what type of knowledge the camera is capable of producing in an environment where filming is not allowed?