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Culture vultures - The Iran behind the headlines

Global Arab Network - - Adam Turner

Wednesday, 04 November 2009 00:04

For culture vultures, it borders on the banal to say that Iran deserves attention for a number of things that have nothing to do with nuclear programmes or the controversial attitudes of its head of state.

High-profile filmmakers; a vibrant modern literary scene that has produced works as diverse as Sadegh Hedayat's fascinating yet puzzling The Blind Owl and Mahmoud Doulatabadi's rural epic Kelidar; a society that is charged with conflict and is surrounded, on the one hand, by images of Shi'ite leaders and martyrs, yet on the other has produced one of the world's most lively blogger communities; photographers and visual artists that have long been names in the international scene. All of these shape the face of this fascinating nation.

Anyone who would like to gain insight into this country would do well to get their hands on Transit Tehran, a diverse anthology of images and texts.

The loosely structured sequence of texts begins with a potted history of Tehran. Women play a dominant role in the next section, the evidence of Iranian "girl power": images ranging from beauties with cigarettes between their lips and headscarves balancing precariously on the backs of their heads, to women police officers armed with pistols and dressed in chadors, to women football fans obstinately fighting for their right to enter the stadium.

In the second half of the book, urban and social issues alternate, and are highlighted by provocative contrasts. For example, a report about an Islamic school for women is immediately followed by a series of photographs of prostitutes that were taken before the Islamic Revolution.

A similar strategy was applied to the section on visual arts, where a series of bombastic paintings by the folk artist Khosrow Hassanzadeh is followed by a more erotically tinged work by the exiled artist Nicky Nodjoumy. The best visual art in the book comes from the pen of the caricaturist Ardeshir Mohassess, who was active during the reign of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and has also been living in exile since 1976. None other than the internationally renowned artist Shirin Neshat praised his work as a "gift from heaven".

The editors of the anthology undoubtedly belong to the progressive, critical camp, which is all the more reason to admire them for the respect they show the religious world by, for example, giving a photographer the opportunity to provide insight into the private life of a religious scholar. The image of the master relaxing among his students in a very human, photogenic pose, surrounded by the gently smiling faces of young men, presents to Western readers a largely unknown aspect of Islam in Iran.

The only disappointing images in the book are the sequences of film stills that are unsuitable for such a static presentation and the quality of the reports and literary texts is not consistently high. The essay about the Naziabad district, for example, is a bald and barren list of institutions and names that is too dull even for the most enthusiastic reader; the one picture by Nodjoumy (all other artists are represented by several works) is accompanied by a rather inconsequential little essay; and of the four short stories in the book, the most impressive is Alireza Mahmoodi-Iranmehr's macabre study of the Gulf War, which is told from the perspective of a corpse.

Be that as it may, this volume certainly suffices as a first glimpse of Tehran in book form.

Global Arab Network

* Angela Schader is a journalist for the Swiss daily newspaper Neue Züricher Zeitung. This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) with permission from the author. Source: Neue Züricher Zeitung/Qantara.de,

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