A Different Picture of Iran

Where: Sackler Gallery of Art

When: closing February 9, 2019 (today!)

So if you've got a few minutes to spare today, run right over to the Sackler to see this exhibit of Iranian women photographers.  These are portraits from the late 1970s to the present - not the Iran of the Revolution, but the Iran that has emerged afterwards.

The show opens with the video pictured here by Newsha Tarakolian.  I thought at first it was a very large photograph, but it's a video - you can see the branches of the tree and the plastic bags moving in the breeze.  The woman who is the subject of the portrait is holding very still - you have to watch very closely to see any movement at all.  One of the guards and another visitor and I stood in front of the piece for several minutes, watching her - it's not for the impatient, that's for sure.

In the next room, Hengameh Golestan gives us photographs of the last days before the imposition of the chador.  Seeing pictures of Iranian women outside without their heads covered made me view them as less "alien," less "other."  They seemed like anyone I would see walking down the street here in the US.  A reminder that underneath the chador, they are still like me.

A very interesting artist is Shadi Ghadirian.  She constructs portraits of modern-day Iranian women taken in the style of the 19h century Qajar pictures, examples of which are also on display.  You see them covered (again, the alienness) but with a Pepsi can, or a bicycle or a newspaper.  Part ancient and part 21st century.

Malekeh Nayiny, who has lived in the West since 1979,  explores the loss of her family and home by "updating" her family photos.  The idea of not feeling at home either in Iran or outside of it is also the theme of Mitra Tabrizian's monumental photos.  Those who stay idealize the West and those who leave feel disconnected.  Both groups have a will to survive, but neither option seems comfortable.

Gohar Dashti's photographs of buildings overtaken by vegetation and devoid of people, and her Slow Decay series, which features expressionless people and uses blood as an accent in her photographs, show an alienation in contemporary Iranian society.

There's much more to Iran than what you see either in history books or on the news.  This show gives you a glimpse of it.

Verdict: This isn't a huge show, so you get only a taste of each artist's work.  Even that small encounter makes you realize there's more going on in Iran than you might think.