Persian Visions

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rsian VisioPersian Visions C o n t e m p o r a r y P h o t o g r a p h y f r o m I r a nH a m i d S e v e r i G a r y H a l l m a n


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Persia


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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 f r o m I r a n

H a m i d S e v e r i G a r y H a l l m a n


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Introduction 8

Persian Visions 10

Exhibition Checklist 66

ContentsPublished by International Arts & Artists (IA&A), 2005www.artsandartists.org

International Arts & Artists9 Hillyer Court NWWashington, DC 20008 USA

Catalogue designed by Nynke de Haan and AndreaYeo for IA&As Design Studio, and edited by PennyKiser, editorial manager at IA&A

Printed and bound by Craft Print, Singapore

ISBN 0-9662859-8-0

2005 International Arts & Artists, Washington, DCNo part of this catalogue may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means withoutpermission from International Arts & Artists.

All images in this catalogue are courtesy of theartists

(right) Ahmad Nateghi,Untitled (page 56)

Frontispiece: Mohammad Farnood,Myth of War (page 40)

Front cover: Koroush Admin,Revelations(page 64)

Inside back cover: Shahrokh Jafari,Childs View 1 (page 34)

Persian Visionswas developed by Hamid Severi for the TehranMuseum of Contemporary Art, Iran, and Gary Hallman of the RegisCenter 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.

Exhibition Venues:

Nicolaysen Art Museum, Casper, WYOctober 2005 January 2006

Honolulu Academy of Art, HIJanuary 2006 April 2006

University of Arizona Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ August 2006 October 2006

Chicago Cultural Center, ILNovember 2006 December 2006

Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NYJanuary 2007 March 2007

Art Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, MD April 2007 May 2007

University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MIOctober 2007 January 2008

For an updated schedule of venues:www.artsandartists.org exhpages/persian.html.

Robert Silberman

David Furchgott


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Before I went to Iran, someone suggested that if I was asked I shouldtell people I was Canadian. I decided to stick with the truth. As an American I waswelcomed, and often told, We love Americans. I did not see evidence of theso-called axis of evil. It certainly was not on the streets of Tehran, or in the artmuseum, 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 learnedhere through art, that we must suspend preconceived beliefs, or at least suspenddisbelief, to truly understand those we might misjudge as our adversaries.

In my ten days viewing art, what struck me the most was the youthand energy of the Iranian artists and their interest in simultaneously pushingboundaries and nding something of their own roots in their work. This is equallytrue among the photographers in Persian Visions. The photographs in thisexhibition hint at a storysometimes to an extreme. While these are photographs,often luscious with color and imagery, they are also narratives and providecultural clues about our sameness and our differences. Art is a great mediator of differences. Understanding cultural origins and differences lessens our fears, anddevelops appreciation and tolerance. Hopefully this exhibition will lead you, theviewer, 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 catalogueguides us through the exhibition with great insight and sensitivity.

International Arts & Artists is grateful to the ILEX Foundation; theUniversity of Minnesota McKnight Arts and Humanities Endowment; and theDepartment 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. responseto 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 Universityof Maryland, College Park; the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at CornellUniversity, 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 Bene t of All,David Furchgott, President

International Arts & Artists, August 2005

Introduction

Neither an Axis of Evil nor a Great Satan

Increasing cross-cultural understanding through the arts is a coremission of International Arts & Artists and a cause dear to my heart. It would behard to imagine a greater opportunity to achieve this than the U.S. tour of PersianVisions: Contemporary Photographs from Iran.

Persian Visionswas arranged in spite of t he current U.S. governmentsanction against of cial cultural exchange with Iran. When I visited Iran recentlyI learned of the project from Dr. Ali Reza Sami Azar, director of the TehranMuseum of Contemporary Art. Dr. Sami Azar rst conceived this concept withGary Hallman, photographer and University of Minnesota professor. Enlistingthe assistance of Hamid Severi t o serve as independent curator for the TehranMuseum of Contemporary Art, joined Gary Hallman to bring these extraordinaryand diverse photographers in an exhibition to the U.S.Persian Visions is the resultof their ability to put together a people-to-people endeavor that overcame dauntingobstacles.

I was in Iran at the time as an unof cial judge on the rst foreign jury for the National Painting Biennial. I believe I was unof cial 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 hadsome concerns of my ownwhich thankfully proved unfounded. It turns out our street-level view of Iran is as equally distorted as their of cial view of us.

When I arrived in Iran I was elevated to of cial status. Later myEuropean and East Asian jury colleagues asked me to be the spokesperson. Theopening ceremony was attended by hundreds of young Iranian artists. My namewas 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 acountry whose name we cannot mention as we dont want the museum to lose itsgovernment funding.

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goal is not to document contemporary Iran for t he non-Iranian world, dispellingthe sense of exoticism and foreignness that permeates Western coverage of I ranand the Middle East.Persian Visions is not A Day in the Life of Iran, an attemptat a systematic portrait of a country. It is a gathering of more personal efforts,with the view of contemporary Iran ltered through private, individual sensibilitieseven when addressing shared public concerns. In expressing their many differentvisions of their world, the contributors do offer a look at both private and publicrealms. Yet their pictures do not provide a neat guideMysteries of the OrientRevealed.

They do something better. They demonstrate how rich and variedare the possibilities of photography as a medium of expression, and how fullythose possibilities are being explored in contemporary Iran. These images arenot the result of a coordinated group effort or a shared group style. What theyhave in common, above all, is artistry. Photography is in a period of change as

old methods are giving way to new techniques and the digital revolution takeshold. ButPersian Visionsdemonstrates that photography is alive and wellandhow!in Iran. Much remains allusive and elusive in these works, at least for thisoutsider-viewer. But one thing is clear: the quality of the work.

According to curator Hamid Severi, in the immediate wake of theRevolution and during Irans war with Iraq (1980-88), photography in Iran waslargely public, photojournalistic, even propagandistic. In the period since, therehas been a turn t oward private and aesthetic concerns, driven in part by newsupport for the use of photography as an artistic medium in the universities, andby a network of galleries, publications, and friendships within the photographiccommunity and the broader art and media worlds. There are still proscriptionshowever: no nudity can be shown and no sensitive issues, especially politicalquestions concerning the regime, can be addressed.

Persian Visions

In the photographic community in Europe and the United States, thebest-known pictures of Iran are probably those in the 1983 bookTelex Iran: In theName of Revolutionby the photojournalist Gilles Peress. The photographs weremade in 1979-80 in the wake of the Iranian revolution that forced the Shah intoexile and brought Ayatollah Khomeini to power. At the time, Americans caught upin the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran were still being held hostage.

The Peress images display great immediacy, intensity, and graphicstrength. They are accompanied by Telex messages exchanged with thephotographers photo-agency, Magnum, which reinforce the sense of disconnection and confusion and make clear how dif cult it was to get thephotographs published. A note by the photographer facing the title page states,These photographsdo not represent a complete picture of Iran or a nal recordof that time. An epigraph from Roland Barthes establishes an ironic attitude

toward those young photojournalists at work around the world determined uponthe 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 makeclear that capturing actuality is not really possible, given the stereotypes aboutthe Middle East in general and contemporary Iran in particular, and the fact thatPeress, a Frenchman, is an outsider. All the same, the photograph placed at theend of the introductory statement shows a hand-painted sign that says, As anIranian I want you corresponders + journalists + lm-takers [to] tell the truth to theworld.

More than two decades later, the 20 photographers in Persian Visions offer the view from the other side. They are insidersIranians. For them it is theWest that is on the other side; otherness, after all, is a matter of perspective. Their

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One of the most striking aspects of thework inPersian Visions is that these photographers are obviouslynot isolated from theworld of contemporary photographyand art. On the contrary, it is obvious just how connectedthey 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 printingeven as others use traditional lm and dar kroom techniques. Also apparent, accompanying this technical sophistication,is formal and conceptual re nement, so that there are manysimilarities tothe kind of work one would see in New York,Par is, Londonor Minneapolis, where the exhibition rst

appeared. To take but one example: Sadegh Tirafkan presents photographic images as elements in a w ork thatalso includes moving pictures on monitors. Thatis a sign of how international trends, in this case the use of mixed-mediainstallations, 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 howdeeply these photographs are rooted in Iranian culture, withpowerful preoccupations or nuanced in ections that arisefrom the speci c characteristics of the country, its past as wellas its present. Identity, that unlimited yet essential subject, is

SadeghTirafkan,Persepolis (59)

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Majid Koorang Beheshti,Untitled (29) Majid Koorang Beheshti,Untitled (31) Majid Koorang Beheshti,Untitled (32)

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central to much of the work, as is indicated by the centralityof portraiture, whether in the triptych byMajid Koorang Beheshti , showing his pro le illuminated in three differentpositions, looking up, looking down, and with a shadowy

gure in the backgrounda vision of identity at once epicand uncertainor in the exquisite, haunting studies byArman Stepanian of the photographs on gravestones.

The pleasure to be found in the beauty of theprints and the subtle treatment of surfaces, textures, andpatterns of light and shadow is another notable aspectof Persian Visions. This devotion to beauty is worthy of the early 20th-century Pictorialists, photographers suchas those in the circle around Alfred Stieglitz who weredetermined to prove the artistic status of photography.It also no doubt recalls the extraordinary love of surfacepattern and color to be found in traditional Persian art anddesign. The sheer loveliness of Ebrahim Khadem Bayats pictures is a reminder of the ability of photography tomake subjects into objects of mystery and fascination, ina shrouded female gure or the delicate play on presenceand absence created by nothing more than a lmy,ethereal garment draped on a chair. With their seductivesoftness, Farshid Mesghalis images draw us into a world Arman Stepanian,Untitled (37)

(Right) Arman Stepanian,Untitled (38)


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Arman Stepanian,Untitled (40)

(Right) Arman Stepanian,Untitled 18


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where time is frozen and we can share in the dreamycontemplation of sh in the aquarium or the pleasuresof observing life pass by those sitting on a bench besidea street. Saeed Sadeghis group of photographs titledTheir Hands Are In Painmoves from a more journalisticimage, with a woman behind a metal ligree shownholding up a snapshot of a man, to the more purelyaesthetic, as in the image of hands standing out againstthe dark chador of a woman whose face is not shown,or a lyric study of a gure silhouetted against the sky. Inthe forceful, expressionistic geometry of Majid KoorangBeheshtis photographs aesthetic concerns are alsocentral, although in a different key. Beheshti is a painter,

and his photographs use black forms as an architecturalfoundation, with the strength of a good abstractpainting notwithstanding the presence of a woman inone image. These works hover between abstractionand representation: one that is dark to the point of befuddlement includes what I took to be a roughly-hewnhead but turned out to be--mea culpa--a garbage bag.

The pure visual appeal of many of the worksis shadowed by the signs inPersian Visionsof howchallenging it can be to make images in Iran today. InIslamic societies the act of making representations can be

EbrahimKhademBayat,Untitled (26)

(Opposite) EbrahimKhadem Bayat,Untitled (27)


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controversial, even dangerous. In contemporaryIran there is relative freedom of artisticexpression. Nevertheless, one way that thecommon culture does appear in Persian Visions is in the preoccupation with representation, andthe issue of what can and cannot be shown.The work of Shokoufeh Alidousti presents

the artist veiled, seen largely as the intenseblack form of her chador with only a bit of her face showing in a corner (with lipstick, andtherefore modern). But the family snapshotsshe holds are exposed to view and includeimages of her in less formal, less partial views.The series Image of Imaginationby BahmanJalali presents people in an appealing varietyof conventional studio portraits from early in the20th century. These images are sandwichedbetween fragments of the words from a sign for a photography studio and what might appear in the West to be the bold gestural strokes

EbrahimKhademBayat,Untitled (25)

(Right) Farshid Mesghali,Untitled (Girl& Fishes)(50)22


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of Abstract Expressionismbut are in fact the defacingmarks of cultural hardliners indicating their condemnation of photographic portraiture as inappropriate. In turn,GenerousButcher , one of several works byEsmail Abbasi that juxtapose two images, presents an antique-colored illustrationof the healing of a butcher by a saint, I mam Ali. In this familiar tale the butcher sells tainted meat to a lady who complainsto the Imam, and when the butcher realizes with whom heis dealing, he breaks his arm, only to have it restored by theholy man. Combining the old-fashioned image illustrating thistale with a photograph of a broken pencil in effect establishesa 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 ock of birds, anunmistakable allegory of restraint and freedom.

As in other countries where freedom of expressionis at issue, artists in I ran often use guarded strategies thatprotect against repression and censorship by avoiding anyovert, easily identi able statement. Such works display anawareness that in a place and time where upheaval anddanger appear the basic state of affairs there may be nosuch thing as the pursuit of beauty for its own sake. Beautymight appear a self-indulgent luxury or a deliberate statementof disengagement. Yet it may also provide a disguisenot

Saeed Sadeghi, Their Hands Are In Pain(14)Saeed Sadeghi, Their Hands Are In Pain(12) Saeed Sadeghi, Their Hands Are In Pain(15)

Saeed Sadeghi, Their Hands Are In Pain(16)

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a sugar-coatingthat conceals a meaning or message.Whether because of the political situation, especiallyas it affects the politics of representation, or becauseof a personal or cultural love of allegory and hermeticexpression, many contemporary Iranian artists haveturned to an art of indirection and mystery. The imposingbut enigmatic untitled image byLeila Pazooki is the mostdramatic example of this tendency inPersian Visions, atableau with elements that appear undeniably symbolic yetremain all but undecipherable. What might be the meaningof the glass urn with water, the skull, the shrouded gures,the heavy-metal T-shirt emblazoned with a scythe andDeath in Gothic letters, the verbal fragment [sy]mbolicpeeking out from behind the water- lled urn? There is alsothe antique fan, a neat curiobut what does it mean?Inspiration, in the manner of Jean Cocteau, the Frenchavant-gardist who had Orpheus gaining poetic inspirationthrough obscure messages sent via a car radio? Or is afan sometimes only a fan, a decorative element? I suspecteven Iranians would be challenged by this symbolism. Asan outsider to Iranian art and societyI have never been toIranI nd the image a provocative puzzle.

The exhibition presents surprisingly fewconventional landscape images, but in the juxtaposedancient monuments and modern buildings inShahrokhJafaris series, Childs View , as well as inTirafkans

ShokoufehAlidousti,Self-Portrait4(24)

ShokoufehAlidousti,Self-Portrait1(21) ShokoufehAlidousti,Self-Portrait3(23)

ShokoufehAlidousti,Self-Portrait2 (22)

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images from Persepolisthe embodiment of ancientPersiait is possible to see landscapes presentand past and become aware of the unavoidableimportance of history in Iran. Many images inPersianVisionsare haunted by the ancient past and its roleas a backdrop for the present, and by a sense thatcontemporary issues of national identity and the roleof Iran in the world remain bound up with the cultureshistorical heritage. The dialectic between past andpresent 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, asa tourist site that becomes a theatrical stage for the

play of identity. There are also reminders of a lessdistant past in images from the Iran-Iraq War, whenphotojournalism of a particular kindcommittedartwas all.Mohammad Farnoods images recallthat period by displaying a commitment to the epicof war in a heroic portrait of special troops, and inthe image of a memorial to a dead soldier and thehard vision of Survival . Yet there is also the poeticDaily Life, of a street musician amid falling snow.The photographs of the late Kaveh Golestan , a pre-eminent photojournalist in Iran and a tragic casualty of Bahman Jalali,Image ofImagination 3(43c)

Bahman Jalali,Image ofImagination 5 (43e) Bahman Jalali,Image ofImagination 1(43a)

Bahman Jalali,Image ofImagination 4(43d)

Bahman Jalali,Image ofImagination 2 (43b)28


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LeilaPazooki,Untitled (41)

EsmailAbbasi,Generous Butcher (42a)

the 2003 U.S. led war in Iraq, display an expressionisticwash that both heightens and softens the shock effectcaused by seeing the disasters of war, dead babies andmourning relatives. These images are not heroic buttragic. The use of historical imagery, beyond suggestingnostalgia, a melancholy sense of loss, or an ironicstandard 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, canprovide pictures of women that could otherwise not beshown.

A sense of history also appears in the playbetween media. Another double image byEsmailAbbasi , titledRumi , has one part that shows a silhouetteof a photographer against a blurred, spinning imageon top of which are calligraphic marks. This might beinterpreted in several ways: as an image of the effortof the still photographer to capture the rapid movementof life, and in particular the inexpressible, mysticalexuberance and self-abnegation of Su sm (Die, die,before you die); as an indication that the photographer must somehow enter into that energetic ow; or as a signof the relationship between two major ways of describingexperience, calligraphy (and writing) and photography(and image-making). That play between the hand and


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EsmailAbbasi,Siegfried (42c) EsmailAbbasi,Rumi (42b) EsmailAbbasi,Tantalus(42d)

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the machine, old and new forms of communication,takes another turn in the play between photographyand television that also appears in Persian Visions.Several of the artists incorporate the image of television screens into their images, as if toacknowledge the dominant role of television insupplying images of the world, while upholding thecomplementary signi cance of the still image. For Mehran Mohager in hisT.V. Series (The Light Is Out The Room Is Dark), the play between the screen andthe printed or written word, t he photographic imageand the media image, de nes the heart of his work,the structure of the separate images that he joins tocreate his triptychs. The television is government-controlled and therefore relatively conservative, whilemany of the newspapers are liberal, but the contrastis not necessarily political. In one triptych by Mohager,the printed text at the center of the television screen isa page from a history of photography text; in another,from a wall on a mosque, the texts are religiousbut the writing is poetic not dogmatic. InScattered Reminiscencesby Farshid Azarang , created inresponse to a novel by Goli Taraghi, photographs of the artists father, mother, and sister are set againstimages of a television screen lled with static, andone frame lled with a black card, suggesting thefathers death (the nal image of the mother, blurred,


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may follow the American photographer Duane Michals in using thatdevice to suggest dying). This is at once an original approach toportraiture and a complex meditation on the personal as presentedin photographs and as it exists in the age of mass media. There is apathos in the aging (and deaths) of the subjects, framed by the tensionbetween the old-style photographic image and the television screen asthe medium linking us to the world and the primary source of images incontemporary culture. The sly, innocent-seeming viewpoint inJafaris Childs View offers an unusual perspective, especially in an image thatcaptures the sociological signi cance of the television as the f ocus of adomestic interior and as a kind of distraction: looking at the television,the old woman is not facingJafaris camera.

The two short lms bySeifollah Samadian might seemout of place in an exhibition devoted primarily to the still image. YetSamadian is best known as a photographer, and his lms do serveas a welcome reminder of the renaissance in the cinema enjoyed inIran in recent years. Filmakers Abbas Kiarostami, the Makhmalbafs(Mohsen; his wife, Marzie Meshkin; and their daughter Samira)have become major international gures, and a host of others havealso achieved recognition. One lm, a study of a spider, indicateshow cinema, as opposed to still photography, can exploit duration.It also suggests, behind its nature lm facade, yet another glimpseof a philosophical approach to life. The other lm, which observesa street with a skillful use of a telephoto lens, is an elegant study of

ShahrokhJafari,Childs View 1(20)

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(Left) ShahrokhJafari,Childs View 2 (17)

(Right) ShahrokhJafari,Childs View 4(19)


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Tomorrow I will take the box to the neighborhood andburn it at the intersection, until Moslems, Jews, andZoroastrians see that there is nothing in the box but acurse. There is also a dedication to the worried eyesthat were witness to the wars and genocide, and thenwere closedeyesmemorialized by Daguerres box.So the work indicts photography at the same time thatit upholds its powers, and sets the viewer among thewitnesses to the horrors of our age. Another work byDehghanpoor presents the features of a woman witha mirror in the place where her mouth would be, witha red bar across it, as if to indicate speech or kissing

is forbidden. The eye that peers out of the image atthe viewer in a photograph byAhmad Nateghi posesa different kind of critique, for his photographs are anindictment of Western materialism. In one an anxious-looking woman is juxtaposed with the large, smiling faceof a woman on a large billboard-style advertising poster;in another, a rummage sale contains a beveled mirror and a mans suit held up by an unseen gure so that in asurrealist touch it looks like Ichabod Crane, the headlesshorseman. The color images byTavakoli of his familypresent a domestic world of intimacy, warmth, delicacy.They display a sensitive touch and a wry tone, as in thesprightly color and pattern in the couch upon which the

Mohammad Farnood,Myth ofWar (10)

Mohammad Farnood,Norooz (11) KavehGolestan, Baby (5)KavehGolestan, The Girl (8)

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KavehGolestan, Ice (6)

(Right) KavehGolestan,Ruins(7)42


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father dozes or reads, accompanied by his granddaughter.Yet these photographs, too, reveal an awareness of arti ceat work, for they are staged candids, as the black backdropsand the mirror in a group shot makes clear.

In the end, perhaps inevitably, it is the veil that isthe central element in many of the works, and the dominantmetaphor. Koroush Adims Revelations, three images of mysterious, veiled women, epitomize the exhibition and arenotable even though the subject is a familiar one. In theWest, the veiled Middle Eastern gure is a staple that hasappeared both in the mass media, that is, on television, innewspapers and magazines, and in the contemporary artworld, most notably in the work of the Iranian exile ShirinNeshat, probably the best-known gure associated withcontemporary Iranwhere her work has not been shown.Her Women of Allahseries, in which she photographedherself with props, including a ri e, and then wrote poetryover her body on the images in a memorable combination of photography and text, feature the chador as the fundamentalpiece of clothing. In her videos the presence of women intheir black chadors makes for stark imagery with undeniablepolitical overtones.

Mehran Mohajer,T.V.Series 4 (The LightIs OutThe RoomIs Dark)(34)

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Mehran Mohajer,T.V.Series 1 (The LightIs Out The RoomIs Dark)(33) Mehran Mohajer,T.V.Series 3 (The LightIs OutThe RoomIs Dark)(35)46 47


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The presence of the veil in works inPersian Visionsraisesthe issue of the status of women in Iran and the role of women assubjects in visual images. The chador is at the center of the culturaldiscourse about gender roles and the body, that is, sexual politics.Whether as an individuals free choice or a product of the exercise of authority, the veil is at the center of the debates over traditionalismand modernity, and religion and society. These debates go beyond thepresent by drawing upon the entire history of Islamic and Iranian lawand customs. And in turn that history is entwined with a cultural historyin which the veil has metaphorical force as a symbol of all thoseelements that prevent or limit unmediated sight and representation.

The photographers in Persian Visions include some whoin effect indicate a wish to remove the veil, to see behind the veil byusing the camera as an instrument of exposure and revelation. Allthe same, the veil has its uses as a source of pictorial mystery andambiguity, with layering and concealment not indicative of social or religious customs but elements of art. The presence of the veil thenbecomes a sign that the photograph is neither mirror nor window,neither a re ection of the photographers (or viewers) own positionand preconceptions nor an unmediated, wholly transparent openingonto the world. The images that feature the veil acknowledge thecomplexity of representation, as inAdims images, where the

Farshid Azarang,Scattered Reminiscences(44)48 49


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SefollahSamadian, The White Station(60) YahyaDehghanpoor,Untitled (56)50


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YahyaDehghanpoor,Untitled (55)

(Right) YahyaDehghanpoor,Untitled (57)52

revelations are anything but simple. (Hamid Severiinformed me that inAdims title the Farsi terms translatedas revelations might be rendered more literally aswhat enters into the heart, that is, inspiration or internalrevelation, rather than revelation as an act of externaldisclosure that contrasts with concealment. He also notedthat the chadors in Adimsphotographs are patterned, notblack, and associated with private, intimate, and personalspace and atmosphere rather than the public realm.)

In spite of the (too-) frequent use of the veil inpictures by outsiders of Iran and the Islamic world, the veilremains an unavoidable sign of the culture, a shorthand

device that suggests the complexities surrounding theprocess of representation and, more generally, acquiringknowledge. If the chador, with its play of revelation andconcealment, is a central element in many works inPersianVisions, so the gaze, whether confrontational and turnedback at the viewer, or more relaxed, inviting and evenfriendly, appears equally important. Figures look out of theimage at the viewer in many of these works. Even in theportrait of his own family byTavakoli , in which the artisthimself appears in the tableau and the gazes that meet thecamera appear friendly and inviting, the distance between


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Ahmad Nateghi,Cologn(4) (Right) Ahmad Nateghi,Untitled (1,2,3)


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Ahmad Nateghi,Untitled (2) (Right) Ahmad Nateghi,Untitled (1)

viewer and viewed suggests a threshold of perception, asubtle existential boundary. The outward gaze presented bythis photograph and others calls attention to the reciprocalgaze of the viewer inward, toward the photographs, andheightens awareness of the entire process of photographingand looking at photographs.

The experience of Iran offered byPersian Visions is of necessity incomplete. The dance of clarity and mysterythat animates so much of the work is an intricate, elaborateone. Yet viewers can nevertheless be transported throughthe skill and imagination displayed by the artists. That

does not mean being united through some simple notionof shared humanity in the manner of The Family of Man,or being removed to some transcendental aesthetic realm.There is a healthy dif culty and obscurity in many of thephotographs. The refusal to offer straightforward imagesis sometimes deliberate, as in the dense symbolism of Pazooki or the unusual spatial rendering of Jafari, and ineffect serves as a demand that the viewer look harder andthink harder about what can be shown and experiencedthrough the visual, and about the special challenges posedby contemporary Iran to anyone who chooses to makepictures.


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Shahriar Tavakoli,My Family (Hallelujah 4)(48)Shahriar Tavakoli,My Family (Hallelujah 2)(46)

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Shahriar Tavakoli,My Family (Hallelujah 3)(47)

Shahriar Tavakoli,My Family (Hallelujah 1)(45)

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(Right) KoroushAdim,Revelations 2 (52)62

Photography has always been able to create theillusion of the elimination of distance by bringingto borrow aphrase from Georgia OKeeffethe faraway nearby.PersianVisionscannot entirely surmount the physical and culturaldistance between Iran and the United States. The exhibitionnevertheless builds a visual bridge that allows for differenceseven as it leads viewers to become aware of other ways of being and seeing. Persian Visions is admirable as a good-willgesture and a display of international cooperation throughcultural exchange. Yet in the end it is the art that matters most,and in that regard the English translation of the title of Adims work strikes precisely the right note, for Persian Visions is full of revelations.

Robert Silberman Associate Professor

Department of Art HistoryUniversity of Minnesota


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(Left) KoroushAdim,Revelations 1(54)65

ExhibitionChecklist 17 Sh h khJ f i Child Vi 2 33 M h M h j TV S i 1 (Th Li h I O 44 F hidA S d R i i (12


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Exhibition Checklist

1 Ahmad Nateghi,Untitled 19.5 x 23.252 Ahmad Nateghi,Untitled 24 x 17.53 Ahmad Nateghi,Untitled 17.25 x 244 Ahmad Nateghi,Cologn24 x 17.5

5 Kaveh Golestan,Baby 14 x 166 Kaveh Golestan,Ice14 x 167 Kaveh Golestan,Ruins14 x 168 Kaveh Golestan,The Girl 14 x 16

9 Mohammad Farnood,Daily Life22 x 2610 Mohammad Farnood,Myth of War 22 x 2611 Mohammad Farnood,Norooz 22 x 26

12 Saeed Sadeghi, Their Hands Are In Pain22 x 26

13 Mohamamd Farnood,Survival 22 x 26

14 Saeed Sadeghi, Their Hands Are In Pain14.5 x 2015 Saeed Sadeghi, Their Hands Are In Pain16 x 2016 Saeed Sadeghi, Their Hands Are In Pain15 x 20

17 Shahrokh Jafari,Childs View 2 16.5 x 16.518 Shahrokh Jafari,Childs View 316.5 x 16.519 Shahrokh Jafari,Childs View 416.5 x 16.520 Shahrokh Jafari,Childs View 130 x 30

21 Shokoufeh Alidousti,Self-Portrait 124 x 18.522 Shokufeh Alidousti,Self-Portrait 2 24 x 18.523 Shokufeh Alidousti,Self-Portrait 324 x 18.524 Shokoufeh Alidousti,Self-Portrait 424 x 20

25 Ebrahim Khadem Bayat,Untitled 14.5 x 2326 Ebrahim Khadem Bayat,Untitled 23 x 16.527 Ebrahim Khadem Bayat,Untitled 17.75 x 2328 Ebrahim Khadem Bayat,Untitled 23 x 18.25

29 Majid Koorang Beheshti,Untitled 29 x 4530 Majid Koorang Beheshti,Untitled 29 x 43.531 Majid Koorang Beheshti,Untitled 32 x 4432 Majid Koorang Beheshti,Untitled (3 in a series)19 x 25

33 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 2538 Arman Stepanian, Untitled 27.25 x 38.2539 Arman Stepanian, Untitled 27.25 x 38.2540 Arman Stepanian, Untitled 27 x 38

41 Leila Pazooki,Untitled 50.20 x 73.43

42a Esmail Abbasi,Generous Butcher 27.25 x 19.25

42b Esmail Abbasi,Rumi 27.25 x 19.2542c Esmail Abbasi,Siegfried 27.25 x 19.2542d Esmail Abbasi,Tantalus27.25 x 19.25

43a Bahman Jalali, Image of Imagination 128.25 x 28.2543b Bahman Jalali, Image of Imagination 2 28.25 x 28.2543c Bahman Jalali, Image of Imagination 328.25 x 28.2543d Bahman Jalali, Image of Imagination 428.25 x 28.2543e Bahman Jalali, Image of Imagination 5 28.25 x 28.25

44 Farshid Azarang,Scattered Reminiscences(12in a series), 12.5 x 16

45 Shahriar Tavakoli,My Family (Hallelujah 1)29 x 2946 Shahriar Tavakoli,My Family (Hallelujah 2)29 x 2947 Shahriar Tavakoli,My Family (Hallelujah 3)29 x 2948 Shahriar Tavakoli,My Family (Hallelujah 4)29 x 29

49 Farshid Mesghali,Untitled (Figure on Bench)26.75 x 35.7550 Farshid Mesghali, Untitled (Girl & Fishes)26 x 3551 Farshid Mesghali,Untitled (3 Figures onBench)25.25 x 35.25

52 Koroush Adim,Revelations 2 19.5 x 29.25

53 Koroush Adim,Revelations 319.5 x 29.2554 Koroush Adim,Revelations 119.5 x 29.25

55 Yahya Dehghanpoor, Untitled 23 x 2356 Yahya Dehghanpoor, Untitled 35 x 2357 Yahya Dehghanpoor, Untitled 26 x 38

59 Sadegh Tirafkan, Persepolis(2 in a series)20.5 x 28.5

60 Seifollah Samadian,The White StationDVD

(Right) KoroushAdim,Revelations 3(53)66


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Documents

Persian Visions