HIDDEN ISLAM - 479 COMMENTS gathers the contents of the comment section underneath the Guardian article that journalist Sean O’Hagan devoted to HIDDEN ISLAM (2014), a cadastral catalogue chronicling makeshift Islamic places of worship across Northeast Italy produced by Nicolò Degiorgis.

The volume extends the discussion initiated by the first photographic volume in the form of an imageless photobook. Conceptually, the digital fleetingness of the online debate that unfolded on the Guardian’s website is defied by the solid physicality of the book. Practically, the volume provides sociologists, anthropologists, journalists and researchers with a snapshot of contemporary public opinions on Islam and immigration.

The deluge of viewpoints reported voices skepticism, dogmatism, superstition, sardonic irony and puzzlement. Pedants and bigots hijack a debate ranging from secularism to fundamentalism and all that which lies in-between, from the unwaning centrality of the Moors to the phantom of Mussolini.