One of the iconic series “Qajar” by Shadi Ghadirian of Tehran "in which her humorous pastiches set up a cross-cultural and cross-temporal encounter between a nineteenth-century Persian photographer’s European-influenced backdrop and Ghadirian’s contemporary studio props. Ghadirian juxtaposes young women in traditional Iranian dress with what she describes as “modern” objects, such as boom boxes, musical instruments, and makeup. The incongruity between the subjects and their attributes suggests a tension between tradition and modernity and between restriction and freedom within the public and private realms. …

"[In this] image it is a mirror reflecting foreign and banned books, an allusion to the censorship and compromised communication that limited experience in the 1990s.”

I will be away from Pbase for most of tomorrow (Friday) because our storage shipments from Virginia and Antwerp will be delivered to our house. We’re hoping some of our furniture survived six years in non A/C storage so we can move back into our house and camp out until our household effects arrive from Riyadh, probably at the beginning of September. In all honesty, living in a hotel for all this time is bankrupting us! Anyway, I will catch up when I can.

‘Bullets,’ posted earlier: