An Eye for Iran by Kazem Hakimi

Author:Kazem Hakimi
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781859644317
Published: 2022-06-06T16:00:00+00:00

The European artists who travelled to the Middle East in the 19th century, in search of “exotic” subjects – and perhaps even more so those who stayed at home and painted the Islamic world entirely from their imagination – were fascinated by the role of women in the nations they visited. In the lands of the Ottoman Empire it was particularly the mysterious, forbidden harem that provided a rich theme for Orientalist painters. Arguably, some of that sense of mystery and fascination persists into the 21st century in Western attitudes to the chador or burqa, complicated by legitimate concern for women’s rights and fear of attack from an unseen quarter. The women in Hakimi’s photographs appear in many guises, from ancient beggars to a swift-footed young goatherd. Some are rendered anonymous by their black covering; one image shows women who are distributing leaflets to promote the wearing of a type of chador that does not even leave the eyes uncovered. Chador means tent, and in an ironic detail they have pitched a tent next to their stall, into which they can retreat when they need to take refreshment, making Hakimi’s photograph both a verbal and visual pun. Such women become abstract elements in the composition of several photographs, echoing architectural features: the windows in a mosque or the arches of the Si-oh-Seh Pol Bridge. Arches and windows are subtractions from the solidity of a structure and in a black-and-white photograph these hooded figures can also look like absences, incisions cut from, or through, the surface of the day. In contrast, other images fully capture the individuality of their subjects. In one, a young woman is seated having her fortune read by the side of a dusty road. Her jeans and stylish headscarf mark her out as one of the new generation, yet she is taking the consultation with the utmost seriousness, as are her mother and younger brother, who gaze down into her palm with knitted brows as if struggling to decipher its message themselves. She, meanwhile, looks unwaveringly into the face of the fortune-teller, her expression one of intense enquiry, reflecting her hopes and fears for the future.

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