Catalog - Ilex Foundation

ersian Vision
Persian Visions
C o n t e m p o r a r y
P h o t o g r a p h y
Hamid Severi
f r o m
I r a n
Gary Hallman
Essay by Robert Silberman
Persian
Persian Visions
C o n t e m p o r a r y
Hamid Severi
P h o t o g r a p h y
f r o m
I r a n
Gary Hallman
Contents
Published by International Arts & Artists (IA&A), 2005
www.artsandartists.org
International Arts & Artists
9 Hillyer Court NW
Washington, DC 20008 USA
Catalogue designed by Nynke de Haan and Andrea
Yeo for IA&A’s Design Studio, and edited by Penny
Kiser, editorial manager at IA&A
Persian Visions was developed by Hamid Severi for the Tehran
Museum of Contemporary Art, Iran, and Gary Hallman of the Regis
Center for Art, University of Minnesota and toured by International Arts
& Artists, Washington, D.C.
This exhibition was made possible in part by the ILEX Foundation,
University of Minnesota McKnight Arts and Humanities Endowment,
and the Department of Art, Regis Center for Art, University of
Minnesota.
Printed and bound by Craft Print, Singapore
Exhibition Venues:
ISBN 0-9662859-8-0
• Nicolaysen Art Museum, Casper, WY
October 2005 — January 2006
© 2005 International Arts & Artists, Washington, DC
No part of this catalogue may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means without
permission from International Arts & Artists.
All images in this catalogue are courtesy of the
artists
• Honolulu Academy of Art, HI
January 2006 — April 2006
• University of Arizona Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ
August 2006 — October 2006
(right) Ahmad Nateghi, Untitled (page 56)
• Chicago Cultural Center, IL
November 2006 — December 2006
Frontispiece: Mohammad Farnood, Myth of War
(page 40)
• Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
January 2007 — March 2007
Front cover: Koroush Admin, Revelations (page 64)
• Art Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, MD
April 2007 — May 2007
Inside back cover: Shahrokh Ja’fari, Child’s View 1
(page 34)
• University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI
October 2007 — January 2008
For an updated schedule of venues:
www.artsandartists.org exhpages/persian.html.
Introduction
8
David Furchgott
Persian Visions 10
Robert Silberman
Exhibition Checklist 66
Introduction
Neither an Axis of Evil nor a Great Satan
Increasing cross-cultural understanding through the arts is a core
mission of International Arts & Artists and a cause dear to my heart. It would be
hard to imagine a greater opportunity to achieve this than the U.S. tour of Persian
Visions: Contemporary Photographs from Iran.
Persian Visions was arranged in spite of the current U.S. government
sanction against “official” cultural exchange with Iran. When I visited Iran recently
I learned of the project from Dr. Ali Reza Sami Azar, director of the Tehran
Museum of Contemporary Art. Dr. Sami Azar first conceived this concept with
Gary Hallman, photographer and University of Minnesota professor. Enlisting
the assistance of Hamid Severi to serve as independent curator for the Tehran
Museum of Contemporary Art, joined Gary Hallman to bring these extraordinary
and diverse photographers in an exhibition to the U.S. Persian Visions is the result
of their ability to put together a people-to-people endeavor that overcame daunting
obstacles.
I was in Iran at the time as an “unofficial” judge on the first foreign
jury for the National Painting Biennial. I believe I was “unofficial” because of
some trepidation on their part about inviting an American to be part of this event.
Although my wife is Persian and I have some familiarity with the culture, I had
some concerns of my own—which thankfully proved unfounded. It turns out our
street-level view of Iran is as equally distorted as their official view of us.
When I arrived in Iran I was elevated to “official” status. Later my
European and East Asian jury colleagues asked me to be the spokesperson. The
opening ceremony was attended by hundreds of young Iranian artists. My name
was announced, followed by an introduction in Farsi, which I did not understand,
followed by uproarious laughter. I was later told that Dr. Sami Azar had joked,
“Here to speak for the foreign jurors is David Furchgott, a special guest from a
country whose name we cannot mention as we don’t want the museum to lose its
government funding.”
Before I went to Iran, someone suggested that if I was asked I should
tell people I was Canadian. I decided to stick with the truth. As an American I was
welcomed, and often told, “We love Americans.” I did not see evidence of the
so-called “axis of evil.” It certainly was not on the streets of Tehran, or in the art
museum, or among the artists. And, I certainly never felt that Iranians thought of
me as a representative of the “Great Satan.” I feel there is a lesson to be learned
here through art, that we must suspend preconceived beliefs, or at least suspend
disbelief, to truly understand those we might misjudge as our adversaries.
In my ten days viewing art, what struck me the most was the youth
and energy of the Iranian artists and their interest in simultaneously pushing
boundaries and finding something of their own roots in their work. This is equally
true among the photographers in Persian Visions. The photographs in this
exhibition hint at a story—sometimes to an extreme. While these are photographs,
often luscious with color and imagery, they are also narratives and provide
cultural clues about our sameness and our differences. Art is a great mediator of
differences. Understanding cultural origins and differences lessens our fears, and
develops appreciation and tolerance. Hopefully this exhibition will lead you, the
viewer, to open a door within yourself.
Our sincere thanks to Robert Silberman, associate professor,
Department of Art History, University of Minnesota. His essay for this catalogue
guides us through the exhibition with great insight and sensitivity.
International Arts & Artists is grateful to the ILEX Foundation; the
University of Minnesota McKnight Arts and Humanities Endowment; and the
Department of Art, the Regis Center for Art, University of Minnesota for their
support of Persian Visions. IA&A is also thankful for the enthusiastic U.S. response
to this exhibition. The exhibition will travel to the Nicolaysen Art Museum, Casper,
Wyoming; the Honolulu Academy of Arts, Hawaii; University of Arizona Museum of
Art, Tucson; the Chicago Cultural Center, Illinois; the Art Gallery of the University
of Maryland, College Park; the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell
University, Ithaca, New York; and the University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann
Arbor.
At International Arts & Artists, we thank Marlene Rothacker, senior
exhibitions manager, as well as Hunter Hollins, Sarah E. Gilmore, Nynke de Haan,
Jennifer Gerow, Kyusun Shim, Tatjana Franke, Ivan Djordjevic, Andrea Parker,
Heather Townsend and our entire dedicated staff.
For the Benefit of All,
David Furchgott, President
International Arts & Artists, August 2005
Persian Visions
In the photographic community in Europe and the United States, the
best-known pictures of Iran are probably those in the 1983 book Telex Iran: In the
Name of Revolution by the photojournalist Gilles Peress. The photographs were
made in 1979-80 in the wake of the Iranian revolution that forced the Shah into
exile and brought Ayatollah Khomeini to power. At the time, Americans caught up
in the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran were still being held hostage.
The Peress images display great immediacy, intensity, and graphic
strength. They are accompanied by Telex messages exchanged with the
photographer’s photo-agency, Magnum, which reinforce the sense of
disconnection and confusion and make clear how difficult it was to get the
photographs published. A note by the photographer facing the title page states,
“These photographs…do not represent a complete picture of Iran or a final record
of that time.” An epigraph from Roland Barthes establishes an ironic attitude
toward those “young photojournalists at work around the world determined upon
the capture of actuality,” while one from Jorge Luis Borges serves as a reminder
of the Islamic proscription on representation of living creatures. The disclaimer
by Peress and a statement by “The Editors” indicate a determination to make
clear that capturing actuality is not really possible, given the stereotypes about
the Middle East in general and contemporary Iran in particular, and the fact that
Peress, a Frenchman, is an outsider. All the same, the photograph placed at the
end of the introductory statement shows a hand-painted sign that says, “As an
Iranian I want you corresponders + journalists + film-takers [to] tell the truth to the
world.”
More than two decades later, the 20 photographers in Persian Visions
offer the view from the other side. They are insiders—Iranians. For them it is the
West that is on the other side; otherness, after all, is a matter of perspective. Their
10
goal is not to document contemporary Iran for the non-Iranian world, dispelling
the sense of exoticism and foreignness that permeates Western coverage of Iran
and the Middle East. Persian Visions is not “A Day in the Life of Iran,” an attempt
at a systematic portrait of a country. It is a gathering of more personal efforts,
with the view of contemporary Iran filtered through private, individual sensibilities
even when addressing shared public concerns. In expressing their many different
visions of their world, the contributors do offer a look at both private and public
realms. Yet their pictures do not provide a neat guide—“Mysteries of the Orient
Revealed.”
They do something better. They demonstrate how rich and varied
are the possibilities of photography as a medium of expression, and how fully
those possibilities are being explored in contemporary Iran. These images are
not the result of a coordinated group effort or a shared group style. What they
have in common, above all, is artistry. Photography is in a period of change as
11
old methods are giving way to new techniques and the digital revolution takes
hold. But Persian Visions demonstrates that photography is alive and well—and
how!—in Iran. Much remains allusive and elusive in these works, at least for this
outsider-viewer. But one thing is clear: the quality of the work.
According to curator Hamid Severi, in the immediate wake of the
Revolution and during Iran’s war with Iraq (1980-88), photography in Iran was
largely public, photojournalistic, even propagandistic. In the period since, there
has been a turn toward private and aesthetic concerns, driven in part by new
support for the use of photography as an artistic medium in the universities, and
by a network of galleries, publications, and friendships within the photographic
community and the broader art and media worlds. There are still proscriptions
however: no nudity can be shown and no sensitive issues, especially political
questions concerning the regime, can be addressed.
One of the most striking aspects of the work in
Persian Visions is that these photographers are obviously
not isolated from the world of contemporary photography
and art. On the contrary, it is obvious just how connected
they are. Their works display a state-of-the-art technical
(and technological) skill, with some revealing a mastery of
digital manipulation of camera images and of digital printing
even as others use traditional film and darkroom techniques.
Also apparent, accompanying this technical sophistication,
is formal and conceptual refinement, so that there are many
similarities to the kind of work one would see in New York,
Paris, London…or Minneapolis, where the exhibition first
appeared. To take but one example: Sadegh Tirafkan
presents photographic images as elements in a work that
also includes moving pictures on monitors. That is a sign of
how international trends, in this case the use of mixed-media
installations, can sweep through the contemporary art world,
and how plugged-in Iranian artists are to global developments.
Yet that impression of internationalism in some
elements of style is offset by the even stronger sense of how
deeply these photographs are rooted in Iranian culture, with
powerful preoccupations or nuanced inflections that arise
from the specific characteristics of the country, its past as well
as its present. Identity, that unlimited yet essential subject, is
Sadegh Tirafkan, Persepolis (59)
12
13
Majid Koorang Beheshti, Untitled (29)
14
Majid Koorang Beheshti, Untitled (32)
Majid Koorang Beheshti, Untitled (31)
15
central to much of the work, as is indicated by the centrality
of portraiture, whether in the triptych by Majid Koorang
Beheshti, showing his profile illuminated in three different
positions, looking up, looking down, and with a shadowy
figure in the background—a vision of identity at once epic
and uncertain—or in the exquisite, haunting studies by
Arman Stepanian of the photographs on gravestones.
Arman Stepanian, Untitled (37)
The pleasure to be found in the beauty of the
prints and the subtle treatment of surfaces, textures, and
patterns of light and shadow is another notable aspect
of Persian Visions. This devotion to beauty is worthy of
the early 20th-century Pictorialists, photographers such
as those in the circle around Alfred Stieglitz who were
determined to prove the artistic status of photography.
It also no doubt recalls the extraordinary love of surface
pattern and color to be found in traditional Persian art and
design. The sheer loveliness of Ebrahim Khadem Bayat’s
pictures is a reminder of the ability of photography to
make subjects into objects of mystery and fascination, in
a shrouded female figure or the delicate play on presence
and absence created by nothing more than a filmy,
ethereal garment draped on a chair. With their seductive
softness, Farshid Mesghali’s images draw us into a world
(Right) Arman Stepanian, Untitled (38)
Arman Stepanian, Untitled (40)
18
(Right) Arman Stepanian, Untitled
where time is frozen and we can share in the dreamy
contemplation of fish in the aquarium or the pleasures
of observing life pass by those sitting on a bench beside
a street. Saeed Sadeghi’s group of photographs titled
Their Hands Are In Pain moves from a more journalistic
image, with a woman behind a metal filigree shown
holding up a snapshot of a man, to the more purely
aesthetic, as in the image of hands standing out against
the dark chador of a woman whose face is not shown,
or a lyric study of a figure silhouetted against the sky. In
the forceful, expressionistic geometry of Majid Koorang
Beheshti’s photographs aesthetic concerns are also
central, although in a different key. Beheshti is a painter,
and his photographs use black forms as an architectural
foundation, with the strength of a good abstract
painting notwithstanding the presence of a woman in
one image. These works hover between abstraction
and representation: one that is dark to the point of
befuddlement includes what I took to be a roughly-hewn
head but turned out to be--mea culpa--a garbage bag.
The pure visual appeal of many of the works
is shadowed by the signs in Persian Visions of how
challenging it can be to make images in Iran today. In
Islamic societies the act of making representations can be
Ebrahim Khadem Bayat, Untitled (26)
(Opposite) Ebrahim Khadem Bayat, Untitled (27)
controversial, even dangerous. In contemporary
Iran there is relative freedom of artistic
expression. Nevertheless, one way that the
common culture does appear in Persian Visions
is in the preoccupation with representation, and
the issue of what can and cannot be shown.
The work of Shokoufeh Alidousti presents
the artist veiled, seen largely as the intense
black form of her chador with only a bit of her
face showing in a corner (with lipstick, and
therefore modern). But the family snapshots
she holds are exposed to view and include
images of her in less formal, less partial views.
The series Image of Imagination by Bahman
Jalali presents people in an appealing variety
of conventional studio portraits from early in the
20th century. These images are sandwiched
between fragments of the words from a sign for
a photography studio and what might appear
in the West to be the bold gestural strokes
Ebrahim Khadem Bayat, Untitled (25)
22
(Right) Farshid Mesghali, Untitled (Girl & Fishes) (50)
Saeed Sadeghi, Their Hands Are In Pain (12)
Saeed Sadeghi, Their Hands Are In Pain (15)
of Abstract Expressionism—but are in fact the defacing
marks of cultural hardliners indicating their condemnation of
photographic portraiture as inappropriate. In turn, Generous
Butcher, one of several works by Esmail Abbasi that
juxtapose two images, presents an antique-colored illustration
of the healing of a butcher by a saint, Imam Ali. In this familiar
tale the butcher sells tainted meat to a lady who complains
to the Imam, and when the butcher realizes with whom he
is dealing, he breaks his arm, only to have it restored by the
holy man. Combining the old-fashioned image illustrating this
tale with a photograph of a broken pencil in effect establishes
a metaphorical parallel to the present and poses a question:
where is the person or group or force capable of restoring
freedom of expression? Another pair of images, Tantalus,
juxtaposes a woman in chains with a flock of birds, an
unmistakable allegory of restraint and freedom.
Saeed Sadeghi, Their Hands Are In Pain (14)
As in other countries where freedom of expression
is at issue, artists in Iran often use guarded strategies that
protect against repression and censorship by avoiding any
overt, easily identifiable statement. Such works display an
awareness that in a place and time where upheaval and
danger appear the basic state of affairs there may be no
such thing as the pursuit of beauty for its own sake. Beauty
might appear a self-indulgent luxury or a deliberate statement
of disengagement. Yet it may also provide a disguise—not
Saeed Sadeghi, Their Hands Are In Pain (16)
25
Shokoufeh Alidousti, Self-Portrait 1 (21)
a sugar-coating—that conceals a meaning or message.
Whether because of the political situation, especially
as it affects the politics of representation, or because
of a personal or cultural love of allegory and hermetic
expression, many contemporary Iranian artists have
turned to an art of indirection and mystery. The imposing
but enigmatic untitled image by Leila Pazooki is the most
dramatic example of this tendency in Persian Visions, a
tableau with elements that appear undeniably symbolic yet
remain all but undecipherable. What might be the meaning
of the glass urn with water, the skull, the shrouded figures,
the heavy-metal T-shirt emblazoned with a scythe and
“Death” in Gothic letters, the verbal fragment “[sy]mbolic”
peeking out from behind the water-filled urn? There is also
the antique fan, a neat curio—but what does it mean?
Inspiration, in the manner of Jean Cocteau, the French
avant-gardist who had Orpheus gaining poetic inspiration
through obscure messages sent via a car radio? Or is a
fan sometimes only a fan, a decorative element? I suspect
even Iranians would be challenged by this symbolism. As
an outsider to Iranian art and society—I have never been to
Iran—I find the image a provocative puzzle.
Shokoufeh Alidousti, Self-Portrait 3 (23)
The exhibition presents surprisingly few
conventional landscape images, but in the juxtaposed
ancient monuments and modern buildings in Shahrokh
Ja’fari’s series, Child’s View, as well as in Tirafkan’s
Shokoufeh Alidousti, Self-Portrait 4 (24)
Shokoufeh Alidousti, Self-Portrait 2 (22)
27
Bahman Jalali, Image of Imagination 5 (43e)
Bahman Jalali, Image of Imagination 1 (43a)
Bahman Jalali, Image of Imagination 3 (43c)
Bahman Jalali, Image of Imagination 4 (43d)
images from Persepolis—the embodiment of ancient
Persia—it is possible to see landscapes present
and past and become aware of the unavoidable
importance of history in Iran. Many images in Persian
Visions are haunted by the ancient past and its role
as a backdrop for the present, and by a sense that
contemporary issues of national identity and the role
of Iran in the world remain bound up with the culture’s
historical heritage. The dialectic between past and
present is most apparent in the work of Tirafkan,
where the ruins of the ancient capital are a reminder
of past grandeur but also a sign of the present, as
a tourist site that becomes a theatrical stage for the
play of identity. There are also reminders of a less
distant past in images from the Iran-Iraq War, when
photojournalism of a particular kind—”committed
art”—was all. Mohammad Farnood’s images recall
that period by displaying a commitment to the “epic
of war” in a heroic portrait of special troops, and in
the image of a memorial to a dead soldier and the
hard vision of Survival. Yet there is also the poetic
Daily Life, of a street musician amid falling snow.
The photographs of the late Kaveh Golestan, a preeminent photojournalist in Iran and a tragic casualty of
28
Bahman Jalali, Image of Imagination 2 (43b)
the 2003 U.S. led war in Iraq, display an expressionistic
wash that both heightens and softens the shock effect
caused by seeing the disasters of war, dead babies and
mourning relatives. These images are not heroic but
tragic. The use of historical imagery, beyond suggesting
nostalgia, a melancholy sense of loss, or an ironic
standard against which to measure the present state of
the world, also allows a displacement into a realm free of
some contemporary restrictions. History, for example, can
provide pictures of women that could otherwise not be
shown.
Esmail Abbasi, Generous Butcher (42a)
Leila Pazooki, Untitled (41)
A sense of history also appears in the play
between media. Another double image by Esmail
Abbasi, titled Rumi, has one part that shows a silhouette
of a photographer against a blurred, spinning image
on top of which are calligraphic marks. This might be
interpreted in several ways: as an image of the effort
of the still photographer to capture the rapid movement
of life, and in particular the inexpressible, mystical
exuberance and self-abnegation of Sufism (“Die, die,
before you die”); as an indication that the photographer
must somehow enter into that energetic flow; or as a sign
of the relationship between two major ways of describing
experience, calligraphy (and writing) and photography
(and image-making). That play between the hand and
the machine, old and new forms of communication,
takes another turn in the play between photography
and television that also appears in Persian Visions.
Several of the artists incorporate the image of
television screens into their images, as if to
acknowledge the dominant role of television in
supplying images of the world, while upholding the
complementary significance of the still image. For
Mehran Mohager in his T.V. Series (The Light Is Out
The Room Is Dark), the play between the screen and
the printed or written word, the photographic image
and the media image, defines the heart of his work,
the structure of the separate images that he joins to
create his triptychs. The television is governmentcontrolled and therefore relatively conservative, while
many of the newspapers are liberal, but the contrast
is not necessarily political. In one triptych by Mohager,
the printed text at the center of the television screen is
a page from a history of photography text; in another,
from a wall on a mosque, the texts are religious
but the writing is poetic not dogmatic. In Scattered
Reminiscences by Farshid Azarang, created in
response to a novel by Goli Taraghi, photographs of
the artist’s father, mother, and sister are set against
images of a television screen filled with static, and
one frame filled with a black card, suggesting the
father’s death (the final image of the mother, blurred,
Esmail Abbasi, Siegfried (42c)
Esmail Abbasi, Tantalus (42d)
Esmail Abbasi, Rumi (42b)
32
33
may follow the American photographer Duane Michals in using that
device to suggest dying). This is at once an original approach to
portraiture and a complex meditation on the personal as presented
in photographs and as it exists in the age of mass media. There is a
pathos in the aging (and deaths) of the subjects, framed by the tension
between the old-style photographic image and the television screen as
the medium linking us to the world and the primary source of images in
contemporary culture. The sly, innocent-seeming viewpoint in Ja’fari’s
Child’s View offers an unusual perspective, especially in an image that
captures the sociological significance of the television as the focus of a
domestic interior and as a kind of distraction: looking at the television,
the old woman is not facing Ja’fari’s camera.
The two short films by Seifollah Samadian might seem
out of place in an exhibition devoted primarily to the still image. Yet
Samadian is best known as a photographer, and his films do serve
as a welcome reminder of the renaissance in the cinema enjoyed in
Iran in recent years. Filmakers Abbas Kiarostami, the Makhmalbafs
(Mohsen; his wife, Marzie Meshkin; and their daughter Samira)
have become major international figures, and a host of others have
also achieved recognition. One film, a study of a spider, indicates
how cinema, as opposed to still photography, can exploit duration.
It also suggests, behind its nature film facade, yet another glimpse
of a philosophical approach to life. The other film, which observes
a street with a skillful use of a telephoto lens, is an elegant study of
Shahrokh Ja’fari, Child’s View 1 (20)
35
(Left) Shahrokh Ja’fari, Child’s View 2 (17)
(Right) Shahrokh Ja’fari, Child’s View 4 (19)
figures in the landscape, in this case figures set against
a wintry world of snow and wind. Once again there are
hints of an oblique commentary: the struggle depicted is
not necessarily only against the elements, but against the
difficulties of life in contemporary Iran. Everywhere in these
photographs the private and the public are set against one
another, the public world of the landscape, especially the
street but even the war zone, against the private world of
the home and the family.
Photography has often been described as
the most realistic of media, an objective instrument
for recording the external world. All the more notable,
therefore, is the inward, meditative, at times melancholy
strain in Persian Visions, and the signs of reflexive selfconsciousness. In a manner that sometimes recalls Peress,
with his love of mirrors, reflections and compositional
complexity, there are windows that double the photographic
image as a window onto the world, and peek-a-boo images
with layers of space that provide glimpses of elements in
depth and remind us that not all is open and accessible
to view. A mirror occupies a key place among the gridded
close-ups of eyes by Yahya Dehghanpoor (who studied
in San Francisco with the American photographer Linda
Conner), putting the viewer into the image. A quotation
from the Sufi mystic Rumi accompanies the work:
Mohammad Farnood, Survival (13)
Mohammad Farnood, Daily Life (9)
“Tomorrow I will take the box to the neighborhood and
burn it at the intersection, until Moslems, Jews, and
Zoroastrians see that there is nothing in the box but a
curse.” There is also a dedication to “the worried eyes”
that were “witness to the wars and genocide, and then
were closed…eyes…memorialized by Daguerre’s box.”
So the work indicts photography at the same time that
it upholds its powers, and sets the viewer among the
witnesses to the horrors of our age. Another work by
Dehghanpoor presents the features of a woman with
a mirror in the place where her mouth would be, with
a red bar across it, as if to indicate speech or kissing
is forbidden. The eye that peers out of the image at
the viewer in a photograph by Ahmad Nateghi poses
a different kind of critique, for his photographs are an
indictment of Western materialism. In one an anxiouslooking woman is juxtaposed with the large, smiling face
of a woman on a large billboard-style advertising poster;
in another, a rummage sale contains a beveled mirror
and a man’s suit held up by an unseen figure so that in a
surrealist touch it looks like Ichabod Crane, the headless
horseman. The color images by Tavakoli of his family
present a domestic world of intimacy, warmth, delicacy.
They display a sensitive touch and a wry tone, as in the
sprightly color and pattern in the couch upon which the
Mohammad Farnood, Myth of War (10)
Mohammad Farnood, Norooz (11)
40
Kaveh Golestan, The Girl (8)
Kaveh Golestan, Baby (5)
41
Kaveh Golestan, Ice (6)
42
(Right) Kaveh Golestan, Ruins (7)
father dozes or reads, accompanied by his granddaughter.
Yet these photographs, too, reveal an awareness of artifice
at work, for they are staged candids, as the black backdrops
and the mirror in a group shot makes clear.
In the end, perhaps inevitably, it is the veil that is
the central element in many of the works, and the dominant
metaphor. Koroush Adim’s Revelations, three images of
mysterious, veiled women, epitomize the exhibition and are
notable even though the subject is a familiar one. In the
West, the veiled Middle Eastern figure is a staple that has
appeared both in the mass media, that is, on television, in
newspapers and magazines, and in the contemporary art
world, most notably in the work of the Iranian exile Shirin
Neshat, probably the best-known figure associated with
contemporary Iran—where her work has not been shown.
Her Women of Allah series, in which she photographed
herself with props, including a rifle, and then wrote poetry
over her body on the images in a memorable combination of
photography and text, feature the chador as the fundamental
piece of clothing. In her videos the presence of women in
their black chadors makes for stark imagery with undeniable
political overtones.
Mehran Mohajer, T.V. Series 4 (The Light Is Out The Room Is Dark) (34)
44
45
Mehran Mohajer, T.V. Series 1 (The Light Is Out The Room Is Dark) (33)
46
Mehran Mohajer, T.V. Series 3 (The Light Is Out The Room Is Dark) (35)
47
The presence of the veil in works in Persian Visions raises
the issue of the status of women in Iran and the role of women as
subjects in visual images. The chador is at the center of the cultural
discourse about gender roles and the body, that is, sexual politics.
Whether as an individual’s free choice or a product of the exercise of
authority, the veil is at the center of the debates over traditionalism
and modernity, and religion and society. These debates go beyond the
present by drawing upon the entire history of Islamic and Iranian law
and customs. And in turn that history is entwined with a cultural history
in which the veil has metaphorical force as a symbol of all those
elements that prevent or limit unmediated sight and representation.
The photographers in Persian Visions include some who
in effect indicate a wish to remove the veil, to see behind the veil by
using the camera as an instrument of exposure and revelation. All
the same, the veil has its uses as a source of pictorial mystery and
ambiguity, with layering and concealment not indicative of social or
religious customs but elements of art. The presence of the veil then
becomes a sign that the photograph is neither mirror nor window,
neither a reflection of the photographer’s (or viewer’s) own position
and preconceptions nor an unmediated, wholly transparent opening
onto the world. The images that feature the veil acknowledge the
complexity of representation, as in Adim’s images, where the
Farshid Azarang, Scattered Reminiscences (44)
48
49
Sefollah Samadian, The White Station (60)
50
Yahya Dehghanpoor, Untitled (56)
“revelations” are anything but simple. (Hamid Severi
informed me that in Adim’s title the Farsi terms translated
as “revelations” might be rendered more literally as
“what enters into the heart,” that is, inspiration or internal
revelation, rather than revelation as an act of external
disclosure that contrasts with concealment. He also noted
that the chadors in Adim’s photographs are patterned, not
black, and associated with private, intimate, and personal
space and atmosphere rather than the public realm.)
Yahya Dehghanpoor, Untitled (55)
In spite of the (too-) frequent use of the veil in
pictures by outsiders of Iran and the Islamic world, the veil
remains an unavoidable sign of the culture, a shorthand
device that suggests the complexities surrounding the
process of representation and, more generally, acquiring
knowledge. If the chador, with its play of revelation and
concealment, is a central element in many works in Persian
Visions, so the gaze, whether confrontational and turned
back at the viewer, or more relaxed, inviting and even
friendly, appears equally important. Figures look out of the
image at the viewer in many of these works. Even in the
portrait of his own family by Tavakoli, in which the artist
himself appears in the tableau and the gazes that meet the
camera appear friendly and inviting, the distance between
52
(Right) Yahya Dehghanpoor, Untitled (57)
Ahmad Nateghi, Cologn (4)
(Right) Ahmad Nateghi, Untitled (1,2,3)
viewer and viewed suggests a threshold of perception, a
subtle existential boundary. The outward gaze presented by
this photograph and others calls attention to the reciprocal
gaze of the viewer inward, toward the photographs, and
heightens awareness of the entire process of photographing
and looking at photographs.
The experience of Iran offered by Persian Visions
is of necessity incomplete. The dance of clarity and mystery
that animates so much of the work is an intricate, elaborate
one. Yet viewers can nevertheless be transported through
the skill and imagination displayed by the artists. That
does not mean being united through some simple notion
of shared humanity in the manner of The Family of Man,
or being removed to some transcendental aesthetic realm.
There is a healthy difficulty and obscurity in many of the
photographs. The refusal to offer straightforward images
is sometimes deliberate, as in the dense symbolism of
Pazooki or the unusual spatial rendering of Ja’fari, and in
effect serves as a demand that the viewer look harder and
think harder about what can be shown and experienced
through the visual, and about the special challenges posed
by contemporary Iran to anyone who chooses to make
pictures.
Ahmad Nateghi, Untitled (2)
(Right) Ahmad Nateghi, Untitled (1)
Shahriar Tavakoli, My Family (Hallelujah 4) (48)
Shahriar Tavakoli, My Family (Hallelujah 2) (46)
58
59
Shahriar Tavakoli, My Family (Hallelujah 1) (45)
Shahriar Tavakoli, My Family (Hallelujah 3) (47)
60
61
Photography has always been able to create the
illusion of the elimination of distance by bringing—to borrow a
phrase from Georgia O’Keeffe—the faraway nearby. Persian
Visions cannot entirely surmount the physical and cultural
distance between Iran and the United States. The exhibition
nevertheless builds a visual bridge that allows for differences
even as it leads viewers to become aware of other ways of
being and seeing. Persian Visions is admirable as a good-will
gesture and a display of international cooperation through
cultural exchange. Yet in the end it is the art that matters most,
and in that regard the English translation of the title of Adim’s
work strikes precisely the right note, for Persian Visions is full of
revelations.
Robert Silberman
Associate Professor
Department of Art History
University of Minnesota
62
(Right) Koroush Adim, Revelations 2 (52)
(Left) Koroush Adim, Revelations 1 (54)
65
Exhibition Checklist
1
Ahmad Nateghi, Untitled
19.5” x 23.25”
2 Ahmad Nateghi, Untitled
24” x 17.5”
3 Ahmad Nateghi, Untitled
17.25” x 24”
4 Ahmad Nateghi, Cologn
24” x 17.5”
5
Kaveh Golestan, Baby
14” x 16”
6 Kaveh Golestan, Ice
14” x 16”
7 Kaveh Golestan, Ruins
14” x 16”
8 Kaveh Golestan, The Girl
14 “ x 16”
9
Mohammad Farnood, Daily Life
22” x 26”
10 Mohammad Farnood, Myth of War
22” x 26”
11 Mohammad Farnood, Norooz
22” x 26”
12
Saeed Sadeghi, Their Hands Are In Pain
22” x 26”
13
Mohamamd Farnood, Survival
22” x 26”
14
Saeed Sadeghi, Their Hands Are In Pain
14.5” x 20”
15 Saeed Sadeghi, Their Hands Are In Pain
16” x 20”
16 Saeed Sadeghi, Their Hands Are In Pain
15” x 20”
17
33
Shahrokh Ja’fari, Child’s View 2
16.5” x 16.5”
18 Shahrokh Ja’fari, Child’s View 3
16.5” x 16.5”
19 Shahrokh Ja’fari, Child’s View 4
16.5” x 16.5”
20 Shahrokh Ja’fari, Child’s View 1
30” x 30”
Mehran Mohajer, T.V. Series 1 (The Light Is Out
The Room Is Dark), 19” x 14” (each piece)
34 Mehran Mohajer, T.V. Series 4 (The Light Is Out
The Room Is Dark), 19” x 14” (each piece)
35 Mehran Mohajer, T.V. Series 3 (The Light Is Out
The Room Is Dark), 19” x 14” (each piece)
37
Arman Stepanian, Untitled
37” x 25”
38 Arman Stepanian, Untitled
27.25” x 38.25”
39 Arman Stepanian, Untitled
27.25” x 38.25”
40 Arman Stepanian, Untitled
27” x 38”
21
Shokoufeh Alidousti, Self-Portrait 1
24” x 18.5”
22 Shokufeh Alidousti, Self-Portrait 2
24” x 18.5”
23 Shokufeh Alidousti, Self-Portrait 3
24” x 18.5”
24 Shokoufeh Alidousti, Self-Portrait 4
24” x 20”
Ebrahim Khadem Bayat, Untitled
14.5” x 23”
Ebrahim Khadem Bayat, Untitled
23” x 16.5”
27 Ebrahim Khadem Bayat, Untitled
17.75” x 23”
28 Ebrahim Khadem Bayat, Untitled
23” x 18.25”
29
Majid Koorang Beheshti, Untitled
29” x 45”
30 Majid Koorang Beheshti, Untitled
29” x 43.5”
31 Majid Koorang Beheshti, Untitled
32” x 44”
32 Majid Koorang Beheshti, Untitled (3 in a series)
19” x 25”
Shahriar Tavakoli, My Family (Hallelujah 1)
29” x 29”
46 Shahriar Tavakoli, My Family (Hallelujah 2)
29” x 29”
47 Shahriar Tavakoli, My Family (Hallelujah 3)
29” x 29”
48 Shahriar Tavakoli, My Family (Hallelujah 4)
29” x 29”
49
42a
52
43a
Bahman Jalali, Image of Imagination 1
28.25” x 28.25”
43b Bahman Jalali, Image of Imagination 2
28.25” x 28.25”
43c Bahman Jalali, Image of Imagination 3
28.25” x 28.25”
43d Bahman Jalali, Image of Imagination 4
28.25” x 28.25”
43e Bahman Jalali, Image of Imagination 5
28.25” x 28.25”
66
45
Leila Pazooki, Untitled
50.20” x 73.43”
Esmail Abbasi, Generous Butcher
27.25” x 19.25”
42b Esmail Abbasi, Rumi
27.25” x 19.25”
42c Esmail Abbasi, Siegfried
27.25” x 19.25”
42d Esmail Abbasi, Tantalus
27.25” x 19.25”
26
Farshid Azarang, Scattered Reminiscences (12
in a series), 12.5” x 16”
Farshid Mesghali, Untitled (Figure on Bench)
26.75” x 35.75”
50 Farshid Mesghali, Untitled (Girl & Fishes)
26” x 35”
51 Farshid Mesghali, Untitled (3 Figures on
Bench) 25.25” x 35.25”
41
25
44
Koroush Adim, Revelations 2
19.5” x 29.25”
53 Koroush Adim, Revelations 3
19.5” x 29.25”
54 Koroush Adim, Revelations 1
19.5” x 29.25”
55
Yahya Dehghanpoor, Untitled
23” x 23”
56 Yahya Dehghanpoor, Untitled
35” x 23”
57 Yahya Dehghanpoor, Untitled
26” x 38”
59
Sadegh Tirafkan, Persepolis (2 in a series)
20.5” x 28.5”
60
DVD
Seifollah Samadian, The White Station
(Right) Koroush Adim, Revelations 3 (53)