Breathing Space: Iranian Women Photographers

The poetry that lies at the heart of Iranian culture comes alive in this transfixing portrait of a society in upheaval. Drawing from 1979 to the near present, Ghabaian Etehadieh (A World History of Women Photographers), owner of the Silk Road gallery in Tehran, collects work of Iranian women photographers who engage feminism in ways overt and subtle: by negotiating the tension between public and private (Newsha Tavakolian photographs female singers—barred from performing solo since the 1979 Iranian Revolution—performing to the camera with their eyes closed, privileging the viewer with what feels like an profoundly intimate moment); critiquing inequalities endemic to Iranian society, even in war photojournalism (Rana Javadi, prevented from covering the Iraq-Iran War in 1980, expressed her view of the conflict by layering tiles “painted with military motifs, taken from a place of worship” in a nearby town with her husband’s war photos); and interrogating or rearranging the past (Nazli Abbaspour transposes old family photos onto shots of abandoned buildings, recreating the “pomp and circumstance of a bygone era”). From the chillingly familiar pictures of the 1979 Iranian Revolution to the boundary-pushing art of the present, the artists featured here reveal photography as a form of protest that gains power from its diversity and ability to both depict an often-impermeable society and envision a new version. This is excellent. (Jan.)