| | | | Najaf Shokri
Iran Dokht
The photographed portraits are always bearing this kind of feeling, a feeling of permanent loss, the horror of being vanished and forgotten, Of being lost and coming to naught, despite what they pretend and persisting in preserving them. As if we know, when we are photographed, some parts of our existence are taken away forever and tend to be lost. Whenever I happen to face a picture of past, always this feeling, this sense, overwhelms me, as did this people truly exist! Did they happen to live over a time! Have feelings! Fall in love! And Something like a dust of lassitude has covered everything, everywhere, as these portraits have no more relationship with their surrounded society, everything seems to be unfamiliar. My [native] land is full of these paradoxes, and my persistence in demonstrating some parts of this manipulated identity is an invitation for Iranian audience to face the picture of past, without any judgment, without any repentance. This is more like facing past after ages, a mental controversy over "prescribed amnesia" by authority constitution. Ancient excavation of humans and things, searching for pieces of identity within the overflowing mass of horror and emptiness! Recycling a disrupted identity and stitching together the run away "past" from city hall recycling machine! Finding these devastated identity papers within urban waste of Statistic and Registration Administration, gathering them from the mass of urban trashes before that city hall recycling machine indicates that the fate of these wrecked papers are finished! This is all I have done.
In photography, the innate state of being a finder is, in my idea, the dominant one. It is more like discovery than creating. Photography is finding. The history of my [native] land is full of throwing away, ignorance and corruption. Surprisingly, people of this territory have got along with this situation very soon, and everything seems to be normal as it has always been. In my [native] land, the collective memory is meaningless! A disrupted identity is parts of the identity of the whole memory from our native land. These throwing aways, as a friend said, is like kind of extinction of generation. A dominant power tries to make some parts of this history forgotten, thrown away, given to the Recycling Mechanism! No evidence existed, nothing remained that could be referred to the mentioned past under the control of the power, and on the whole, no image remained to be remembered, and memories gradually vanished from minds. Exactly like hiding away the ancient stuff. Everything which opposes the dominant culture and shows incompatibility should be removed. These pictures prevent something to be forgotten, something seems that has never been existed, they are some debris to remember These papers are taken away from the memory book of my [native] land, the permanent forlorn "Iran Dokht" series of my miserable and painful Iran. These pictures are like pieces of a note, all about the conditions of the community of Iranian women. This is more like a gathering of women were born in 1941- rather than an installation or anything else.
Najaf Shokri
December 2008
[Editorial note: This text has been left as it was submitted to preserve the voice of the photographer.]
Enter | |
| |
LuminousLint 
@LuminousLint