Full Description
This study argues that photographs from Qajar Iran (1785-1925) of harem women, royal women, and public women, such as sex workers, musicians, singers, and dancers, make profound statements on the institution of the harem in a time of flux and modernization.
Depictions of the harem in photographs shifted the scopic regime of power and made visible an Iranian "Sultanate of Women," which produced a short succession of formidable, driven women. These photographs became instrumental as a "mirror for princesses," in which women consolidated their political control by fashioning their images, constructing pictures of female rule, leaving a legacy and blueprint for future heads of harem, and bolstering their positions within the harem, the court, the state, and the global arena. Thus, photography played a major role as an ontic condition that would further reformulate perceptions of harem women's ontological Being in the world, resulting in photographic evidence of their perceived agency. By the late nineteenth century, however, the institution of the harem began to wane, and women's search for political influence had to shift to photographs that were marked distinctly and visibly as "anti-harem."
This book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, history of photography, gender studies, and Iranian studies.
Contents
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PREFACE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION
1. INTRODUCTION
2. MYTHS AND ORIGINS OF WOMEN IN QAJAR PHOTOGRAPHY
3. MAHD-E ʿOLYA: THE PHOTOGRAPHY QUEEN: PART I
4. MAHD-E ʿOLYA: THE PHOTOGRAPHY QUEEN: PART II
5. TO BE SEEN OR NOT TO BE SEEN: PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE QUEEN OF IRAN, ANIS AL-DOWLEH
6. WITHIN THE REALM OF A DYING HAREM: THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF KHANOM BASHI
7. A MOTHER OF THE HEARTH: THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF PRINCESS ʿESMAT AL-DOWLEH
8. A MOTHER OF THE REVOLUTION: THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF TAJ AL-SALTANEH
9. OUTSIDE THE HAREM: CELEBRITY AND MODERNITY IN THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF PUBLIC WOMEN
10. CONCLUSION: PHOTOGRAPHS OF SUBLIMATION: FROM HAREM TO GIRLS' SCHOOLS
INDEX
