Portraits from Iran: "Pictures of You"
Over at the parsarts.com blog, Sepideh Saremi* has a post up about Colorado-based artist Tom Loughlin. His portraits of Iranians inside Iran are featured in an installation project currently traveling across the US, "Pictures of You: Images from Iran." Snip:
PA: The photos in Pictures of You are printed on translucent silk. You’ve written that the silk is intended to allow viewers to see each other as well as the photographs, and to remind them that “something beautiful is in jeopardy.” How have viewers reacted to Pictures of You?Pictures of You: Images from Iran (Pars Arts)TL: There have been a wide variety of reactions. In fact, the one commonality seems to be that no one is indifferent. Everyone seems to have a powerful response to the show.
So far, the overwhelming majority of responses have been positive. Viewers thank us for putting a human face on Iran, and many of them have powerful emotional responses. It’s quite amazing for me as an artist to see people emerging from the installation in tears, or emptying their pockets into our donation boxes because they want to see the show travel to other venues.
We have had a variety of negative responses as well. At our installation in Denver, we were picketed by a Christian group that wanted to express the view that Muslims were going to hell. Interestingly, they all agreed that the subjects of my photographs looked like very nice people. At the same installation, we had a visitor tell us that he wanted to go and get dynamite and destroy the artwork. One of our staff members engaged him in conversation about the show, and within ten minutes he had changed his mind completely.
* Diclosure: By day, Sepideh works with DECA, the company with whom Boing Boing partnered to launch Boing Boing tv.
the latest
latest episodes
I've had the impression for some time now that the people of Iran are beautiful and special. But I came to that opinion through my own research and such. I'm not sure plopping this installation at the Kansas State Fair is going to do much more than provoke the ones like the Jesus t-shirt brigade, there. I hope it has some effect. I hope it has an immense effect. It's definitely a wonderful thing.
make one of before and after pictures of Iraqis.
Let's face it:
The real problem we Americans have with Iranians is actually between our respective governments, each keeping their respect people hostage to their own paranoia and fiscal need for an enemy.
No wait, that's international relations in general.
On second thought, this is a hell of a lot more one-sided insofar as its our government that has conistently interfered in Iran and the neighboring region, and the Iranian people have paid a very high price.
I would love to be able to tour Iran one day (the birthplace of Rumi, Hafiz and Shams-i-Tabriz).
There's a special I saw last year called Mystical Iran, and it really opens your eyes.
I wonder if any women have silkscreened life-sized images of their faces onto their hijabs and other headgear.
An acquaintance and I visited this installation while it was up in Denver at Civic Center Park during the DNC. We went over to it Monday, right after the first protest of the DNC and the smell of tear gas was still hanging in the air causing eye troubles. It was good timing, because so soon following the mayhem we were some of the only ones in left in the park and we got the installation all to ourselves while the fearful stayed on the edges and the low hanging fruit was already off to jail.
The protest and police action had just been literally across the street only moments before and the riot police were still strutting around the surrounding area with raging hard ons. Meanwhile, amidst the growing darkness and wafting clouds of gas was this glowing installation with gentle music calling out and beckoning the curious to come and take a visit.
Going into this installation while all this tension was still literally "in the air" between the State and a supposedly free people was just as surreal as it was beautiful.
Here we were, the so-called free people in the Land of the Freedom Fries... surrounded by troops in full freedom-loving riot gear with power to the people tear gas floating around everywhere, viewing our so-called "enemy" in this art installation smack in the middle of this freedom-fest.
This art installation was showcasing the ones the State had pushed so many of us so-called free people through State sponsored corporate propaganda machines (mainstream media) to believe are the ones who truly "hate our freedoms".
The beautiful freedom haters were printed on silk and I was invited by a friendly young woman assisting Tom Loughlin to reach out and touch them.
I thought that was a nice, er.. touch.. to the the installation. Middle-Eastern music was soulfully and joyfully playing in the background while we floated around touching the ethereal, lighted silk photos of Iranians for all the riot police and other freedom lovers to see via outside the translucent exterior.
We absorbed all this for a while then stopped back outside and I talked to the young woman about what she witnessed of the protest and police action, etc. They seemed relaxed about it all and took it in stride. None of them made any political statements, rants, etc. ... they just let the installation speak for itself, and for me, it spoke volumes.
I thanked Tom and dropped some money into the collection box and I headed back out to document more of the surrounding freedom-loving going on in Denver that week.
I find his part of the interview VERY interesting:
PA: Were you able to show this installation at the DNC and RNC? How did viewers at each convention react?
TL: In some ways, the most interesting responses we got were from the Democratic and Republican National Committees that put on the conventions. The DNC had a designated “free speech” zone in a beautiful city park right in the heart of downtown Denver. The DNC helped groups who wanted to put on a display in the park, or march from the park to the auditorium where the convention was being held. We had a rather large, unorthodox installation to put on, but with help from the DNC and officials working for the City of Denver, we were able to pull it off.
We had a different experience with the folks planning the Republican National Convention. We applied to put on our installation in their designated free speech zone – a large, grassy island across the Mississippi River from the convention site. After we submitted our application, we were told that our installation couldn’t go in the free speech zone, so we had to start over again. After months of going back and forth, we were offered a spot just a few weeks before the convention. The proposed location was under a bridge next to a highway, and had no parking lot and no way for pedestrians to cross the highway. We elected not to put on the installation there.
Draw you own conclusions about what those distinctions might mean.
What a great exhibit that at once presents the human dilemma in pictures.
I have yet to meet anyone, here in Israel, who does not view the Iranians as individuals, and Iran as filled with wonderful people. There is a genuine like for Persian culture, which until 1980 welcomed and was open to western culture and ideas.
That said, Israel is the Iranian leadership's proposed ground zero for their hell bent nascent nuclear weapons program, which will absolutely bring about a global conflict, not to mention another tremendous act of genocide.
(The Israeli perspective is that the last time a global leader promised to obliterate millions of Jews ... they succeeded.)
So, art aside, it would be wonderful for such exhibits of Israeli and American faces to be presented in Tehran as art object rather than effigies to be burnt.
Let us not be complacent here.
Obama's government has their work cut out to avoid what will be the lesser of tragedies of either an un-checked nuclear Theocratic Iran with it's expansion into the gulf (think 8$-20$ a gallon) and the complete destruction of the Wests economies and their stated, loudly and publicly, genocidal anti- Semitic intentions
or the defeat of that program with harsh global sanctions (not that China or Russia seem ready to participate)
or a preemptive strike against facilities that will otherwise make this misogynist totalitarian regime a global power.
Would that such conflicts could be avoided or resolved with an art exhibit.
Obama's government has their work cut out
Why? What does it have to do with the US? Why is it our business?
"Why? What does it have to do with the US? Why is it our business?"
Really?
OK. So let's follow the trail.
Iran is allowed to develop nuclear weapons.
Let us leave aside their stated public intent to lob atomic bombs at Israel killing some 3 to 5 million people. (And gee, why would the US want to prevent that?) And let us assume that that would not actually start a nuclear world war (because, you know, we want to ignore that possibility.)
The Theocratic Republic of Iran now can:
Take over the entire gulf by force or threat of force. Understand that in a non-nuclear conflict, Iran can hold its own even against US troops. In a non-nuclear war, Iran can and will dominate the worlds oil supply in a matter of weeks. So we have 150$ a barrel to $400 a barrel oil. Or $5 to $20 a gallon gas. Imagine oh, say, 25% to 35% unemployment in the US and Europe. What exactly do you think civilization would look like in the US at that point? Think of the tumult of a 1%-2% increase in unemployment that has occurred this year and multiply that by 15x or 20x.
And of course who else increases their say in the world at this point? Well, the oil producers of Russia, Venezuela... fine democracies and close friends of the US both.
Or, simpler still, due to the collapse of a US$ the OPEC nations simply request payment in Euros rather than dollars. This means that China dumps its reserves of billions of US$ and... the US economy collapses.
So that is "What does it have to do with the US? Why is it our business?"
Oh, and I guess the afterthought of allowing a second Holocaust is kinda icing on the cake.
If we hadn't intervened to prop up the father of the last Shah, Iran would have been a secular democracy for fifty years now. What happens in the Middle East is not our business. Our interventions are utter failures. The buck stops here.
As to the notion of Iran having nuclear weapons, it would take them decades to develop the nukes and the technology to deliver them. Funnily enough we've just discovered that destroying other people's countries in the search for non-existent weapons of mass destruction isn't a really good idea.
Good luck with your transition back to private life and tell the First Lady that I said 'hi'.
former first lady
Keeper of the Lanthern,
You are very astute in your assertion of the political agendas - on both sides - that shapes and "dictates" public opinion and has sooo effectively demonized people who openly denounce their own government! Government leaders who in no way represent or embody their people's core values and ironically both current leaders have achieved their positions by hijacking their respective elections!!!!!