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IN THEIR EYES
Arab women photographers liftthe shroud of the Muslim world
Young newlyweds gaze at the viewer from their beribboned wreck of a car, which stands alone in a battlefield. Iranian Gohar Dashti's droll, staged photograph of life in a time of war is one of the many memorable works in a new exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, She Who Tells a Story: Women Photographers from Iran and the Arab World.
On view through January 2014 and curated by Kristen Gresh, who also created the show's handsome catalog, the exhibition presents 100 works by 12 contemporary Arab and Iranian women photographers.
Countering clichéd Western views of women in Arabian cultures as submissive, shrouded and oppressed, these artists tell their own stories. Their works are art, but not for its own sake. Instead, the images are potent distillations of human experience, urgent as well as spectacular.
Drawing its title from the name of an artists' collective, rawiya, an Arabian word that means "she who tells a story," Gresh organizes the works into three groups: Deconstructing Orientalism, Constructing Identities, and New Documentary. The images explore such themes as gender power, the toll of war, gaps between the old and new and the struggle to carry on ordinary life in a war zone.
While all 12 artists were born in the Middle East, some currently live in the Europe or the United States. Only two are in their 50s...