Yemeni-born Boushra Almutawakel poses with her daughter and the child’s doll wearing a stylish yellow headscarf smartly complementing her plaid suit. Eight succeeding photographs later all three have been engulfed by full-length black niqabs until they completely disappear from the frame. Iranian photojournalist Newsha Tavakolian combines photographs and video to protest extreme Islamic laws forbidding women from singing alone in public or making recordings. Her clever juxtaposition of six imaginary cd covers picturing a resolute chador-clad woman in public, against six silent video performances, is painfully expressive. Rana El Nemr photographs middle-class women riding the Cairo metro. Pictured alone, weary, or lost in thought, these women are a long way from the front-page photographs of car-bombings and street protests that, although newsworthy, skew our perception of everyday life in the Arab world. In this insightful new exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston through January 12, 12 contemporary Arab artists, all women, use a variety of photographic styles, from staged narratives to traditional documentary, to debunk such western stereotypes. It couldn’t be timelier.
Kristen Gresh, MFA’s Estrellita and Yousuf Karsh Assistant Curator of Photographs, has assembled a group of female artists who, she says, represent the strongest photography coming out of this part of the world, and the evidence is abundant in the 100 photographs and two videos on view. Shadi Ghadirian stages informal domestic scenes with disarming connotations like the way a colorful headscarf casually shares a coat rack with a combat helmet or a pair of red highheels is shown toe-to-toe with bloodstained field boots. Gohar Dashti goes even further on the home front, enacting everyday routines in a desolate battlefield. A young couple hangs their laundry on a tangle of barbed wire or drinks morning tea in front of a tank poised to strike.
Twenty-five years ago Edward Said unveiled myriad European and American biases toward the Arab world in his seminal text Orientalism. This exhibition shows all the ways reconsideration is still required.
Rania Matar
Born and raised in Lebanon and a resident (and cit...
Shirin Neshat
Photographer and filmmaker Shirin Neshat is among ...
Laia Abril: On Mass Hysteria | Photo Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland
In 2007, nearly 600 students at the Villa de las N...
Fazal Sheikh: Creating Common Ground
About 15 years ago, I came across Fazal Sheikh’s s...
David Levinthal
In the micro worlds they create, model-building ph...
Best of 2016
Formed in 1963 by 11 photographers who recognized the necessity of “a forum to address the underrepresentation of African Americans in their field,” the Kamoinge Workshop gave its members a sense of solidarity and support in a period when black Americans were the frequent subject of mainstream media coverage but rarely its author.
Interview: Michelle Dunn Marsh and Sylvia Plachy
Michelle Dunn Marsh, the founder of Minor Matters, the Seattle-based photography book publisher, has championed many photographers over the years.
Zanele Muholi and the Women's Mobile Museum
At this point in her career, the barriers faced by South African photographer Zanele Muholi – barriers preventing her from speaking her truth and taking control of her own image – would seem to have been dispatched, conquered by the force of her powerful photographs and stunning, theatrical self-portraits.
Rough, Blurred, Out of Focus: A Closer Look at Provoke
As Japanese photography has found itself in favor ...
Jon Henry
Jon Henry is the recipient of the 2020 Arnold Newman Prize for New Directions in Photographic Portraiture for his series Stranger Fruit, portraits of Black mothers holding their sons in poses that suggest the pietà.
Carol McCusker
The two most recent photography exhibitions at the...
Flor Garduno
The photographs of Flor Garduño create a bridge be...