Iran - Caged

Destination: Iran

Book: Inge Morath: Iran Additional text by Monika Faber and Azar Nafisi and edited by John P. Jacob. Review copy provided by the publisher, Steidl, Germany.

Traveling alone, Inge Morath (who later would marry Arthur Miller and collaborate on various projects) toured Iran and took photographs for various clients in the United States. She died in 2002, and the Inge Morath Foundation has assembled photographs and records of this trip taken in 1956 for Inge Morath: Iran.

Monika Faber, from the Albertina Museum in Vienna, who explains Morath’s techniques in a text, quotes Morath.

I always preferred territories: Iran in the Middle East…Spain and Mexico, Russia and China, countries whose influence extended beyond their borders, ‘mother cultures,’ she wrote.,[...]Most of the time it was literature that raised my enthusiasm for a certain place, visual and popular art that stimulated my eye…”

Iran Marketplace - broom seller

Ah, yes, that sounds familiar doesn’t it?  “Literature than raised my enthusiasm for a certain place”?

The reader is not only treated to a beautiful presentation of the black and white photos of an Iran that does not exist any more, but details such as her letters of assignment and minutiae of the journey that make it easier to understand the circumstances of her travel.

It is difficult to convey the fascination of these photos–a marketplace in a village of sand-blown mud huts, a Zorastrian ceremony inside a home, ordinary people in traditional costumes posing unselfconsciously for the camera. You can look at these photographs for sheer enjoyment, for a history lesson, or if you love photography, as a lesson in technique. You don’t have to be traveling to Iran to enjoy poring over these 320 images.

Iran: Little Girls Weaving Rugs

An interview with Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Iran and Things I’ve Been Silent About, relates the historical Iran with today’s realities. This afterword and the one by Monika Faber, make this book more satisfying to me–because I like a story–than books with ONLY photographs in them.

The photos shown here are copyright by the Inge Morath Foundation. DO NOT COPY. Shown by courtesy of Magnum Photos.

Some lucky reader of A Traveler’s Library will win a copy of this book (list price $59.95) when we do our next giveaway. I should mention that I frequently put links to Amazon with book titles. It makes in convenient for you to buy the books, but also provides a few cents to A Traveler’s Library. Please use my links when you buy ANYTHING at Amazon. Thanks!

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Reading Lolita in Tehran

Destination: Tehran

Book: Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi

We may not be able to safely travel to Iran for quite some time. Most of us have a rather vague idea of what life in Iran has been like since the Islamic revolution. Because we ache for the Iranians who struggle today, we can read (or re-read) Reading Lolita in Tehran to get an idea of what life would have been like before and during the Islamic revolution in Iran.

If you missed this book the first time around, now is a perfect time to return to its account of two years during which Nafisi led a group of young women in discussions of Western books.  You will never see Henry James, Jane Austin and Vladimir Nabokov in quite the same light.

Nafisi’s web site also provides a good source for video clips that shed light on real life in today’s Iran, as well. For example, in October last year, the BBC made these podcasts called Children of the Revolution that focus on the youth of Iran. They help foretell what is going on in Iran today.

I hope you will join me in thinking about Iran and in trying to find out the truth about what is happening there this week.

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