Mirrors with Memories

After the success of the Revolution in 1979 and the transformation of Iran into a theocratic democracy in the 1980s, imagery from the nineteenth century began to appear in Iranian visual culture, from theatre and film to painting and photography. These appropriations include nineteenth-century photographs taken by Iranians, fashions, and symbols of the Iranian Empire, such as the Lion and the Sun. In "Mirrors with Memories," Scheiwiller investigates the uses of such images by contemporary Iranian photographers. She argues that the reconstructions of the past in these artists' photographs are spaces that contest "official" memory and history. The act of remembering becomes one of protest and helps to reintegrate the perspectives of previously excluded segments of society. The settings that figure predominately in these photographs are the harem and the photography studio. There is a fascinating and deeply significant analogical relationship between these two spaces as sites for the deconstruction of the narratives of nationhood, modernization, and gender.