Malu Halasa

Malu Halasa is an author and editor, who specialises in the Middle East. She has co-authored several books including The Secret Life of Syrian Lingerie: Intimacy and Design (2008) and Kaveh Golestan 1950-2003: Recording the Truth in Iran (2007). A founding editor of Tank Magazine, she has worked in London as a freelance journalist for the British press.

Newsha Tavakolian

 Newsha Tavakolian (1981, Tehran) has been working as a photographer for the Iranian press since she was sixteen. She is self-taught and began her career at the women’s magazine Zan, where she photographed the daily lives of women in Iran. Tavakolian has also worked in Iran for reformist daily newspapers that have now been banned. She has covered conflicts in Iraq and Lebanon along with the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Newsha Tavakolian has also made a number of other photo documentaries in the Middle East. Her work has been featured in such international publications as Time Magazine, Newsweek, Stern, Le Figaro, New York Times Magazine, Der Speigel, Le Monde, NRC Handelsblad and National Geographic.

Transit Tehran, Young Iran and its Inspirations

This Prince Claus Fund Library Book is a wide ranging anthology about contemporary Iranian life, featuring reportage, fiction and visual essays — art and photography — by thirty Iranian and international artists, photojournalists, reporters and writers. The publication was edited by Malu Halasa and Maziar Bahari. Order through www.garnetpublishing.co.uk

Passion for Perfection

In the winter of 2010/2011, De Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam presents highlights from one of the world’s most renowned collections of Islamic art.Passion for Perfection includes some 500 objects from the collection of Professor Nasser D. Khalili. From 11 December 2010 to 17 April 2011, De Nieuwe Kerk will glitter with richly illuminated Qur’ans and manuscripts, paintings, gold, jewels, textiles, ceramics, glassware, lacquer ware, metalwork, and wood carvings.

Background information

Photography has been an influential medium in Iran right from the end of the 19th century when Shah Naser al-Din made photographs of his wives. By the beginning of the 20th century, Iranian studio photographers were documenting the transition from a traditional society to a vibrant country. Kaveh Golestan later captured revolution and war in stark realistic and iconic black-and-white photos, while his wife Hengameh Golestan captured that last day, 8 March 1979, that women in Iran were not veiled. Most recently, following the chaotic elections of the summer of 2009, photos and video images of the dying demonstrator Neda were spread throughout the world.

Citizen journalism and photojournalism has been in the forefront of challenging stereotypes about Iran. Young Iranian photographers and artists use the camera to explore their country’s turbulent social change. Photography and image-based art reveal a different and complex view of Iran, a country that many westerners mainly associate with ayatollahs and nuclear weapons.