Parisa Damandan remembers her portraits taken as a young girl at a local studio in Isfahan. They were snapshots of a small, shorthaired schoolgirl in uniform turning into a young girl with long straight hair and finally into one on the threshold of womanhood. Later in 1978, Iran’s new political regime swept away existing institutions and put in place harsh laws.
The Iranian women were forced back into the Islamic garb: black head-and-shoulder coverings from which the face appears through a circular opening. Photographers’ studios were forbidden to take photographs of women who were not wearing full Islamic attire. Damandan recalls that the photographs of her in a hijab were of a girl growing up and struggling to adjust to her new appearance. These photographs are a testament to the gradually disintegrating times.
In a war torn-Iran, enrolled at the University of Tehran, Parisa Damandan continued to nostalgically visit Isfahan. “The city holds my existential archives, my sensory archives of scents, of colours, of hundreds of perceptions of light, of an understanding of the meaning of beauty—and my photographs, which are a part of the archives of its photographers’ shops,” she says.
This story is from the March - April 2017 edition of Creative Image.
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This story is from the March - April 2017 edition of Creative Image.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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