The men in the photo scare you because they're wielding machetes and their combat vests are bulging. They scare you because they look like Islamic State terrorists.
What should really scare you, though, is the trick your mind is playing on you. The photo is a performance - a deliberate construction of terror formed from stereotype and prejudice.
Artists Husain and Hasan Essop launch their multimedia exhibition Refuge this month with images like these meant to challenge the Western gaze on Islam. They question how fears, fallacies and fiction have fuelled Islamophobia in a time of mass media and media monopolies.
They also explore what it means to have identities as Muslims and artists creating against a backdrop of rising terror attacks committed in the name of Islam, and their personal conflict of depicting the human form within prescriptions of Islam.
Refuge is reflective and reflexive, it's confrontation and conversation. Above all, it's a plea to not look away.I asked the twins:
Once again you are both staged characters in your photographs for Refuge. Why this performative aspect of your photography?
Hasan: It is the method in which we make our art; it's something we did from the beginning that makes our work unique.
We've always used ourselves as characters because we want to take ownership in case there is backlash over the images.
The photographs are also very personal and intimate. When someone looks at them they have a viewing into the way Husain and I see the world.
For the locations, you've cast figures in scenes like a cemetery, on a beach and in a disintegrated home. The effect is eerie and evocative. Tell me a bit more.
Hasan: We've learnt from movies that you can fool a viewer by choosing a location carefully. So the broken home is in Cape Town but it could also be Aleppo [in Syria] after a bombing.
The beach photo is influenced by the photo of the Syrian boy who washed up on the beach in Turkey in 2015. That moved us both very much.
They are meant to give a gist of where you think they could be, but they could be anywhere.Refuge is an invitation to look deeper, to maybe not be fooled so easily by what is presented to us; what are you seeing in the world right now?
Hasan: We've seen an increase in terrorist attacks and at the same time a war on Islam.
In Syria there's an intensifying war where people have been destroyed and forced to leave their homes. The exhibition is a storyline of this.
There are [Islamic State] figures trying to propagate their message, standing proud. Then we take you to the destruction of war, to the bombings and to people forced to flee.
Then we take the viewer to borders where people are stopped, made to stay for days and days and are then turned away.
Refuge is the start of a conversation. There are many people who are fleeing because of wars; even here in Africa, and it affects everyone, Muslims and non-Muslims.
Husain: The point I want people to realise is how the media uses fear to create hate and hate can justify wars.
There are smoke screens - things that are chosen to be shown, other things that are hidden. Even in Hollywood movies the Muslim is often the enemy and it's the Everyman - the uncle in Mayfair. It's brainwashing happening to all of us.
I'm not lashing out at the world and I am not a victim; but I'm sick and tired that good Muslims don't grab headlines.
Why should we not look away?
Husain: There are more and more hate crimes and we can't think that we are protected in a bubble here in South Africa.
Hasan: If you have love for humanity it's important to know what's happening in the world. Then you will be sympathetic when you meet a refugee. You will have an open heart and you'll help.
• Refuge opens at the Goodman Gallery in Parkwood, Johannesburg, on SaturdayHow the magic happens
The Essops’ signature photographic style begins with the conception of an image, then careful location scouting, precise editing and photo stitching.
A camera set up on a tripod takes multiple images that are carefully constructed to form a single image.
It involves more than 300 photographs “puzzled together”. Every photo is scrutinised to make it into the final constituted image.
The image is complete when the two brothers, who argue over most creative elements, finally agree.
About the Essop twins..