Local Portraiture Local IRANIAN IRANIAN SERIES SERIES The camera is not just an a-cultural technical device, a non-culture influenced medium. Culture, or more precisely, the cultural background of LOCAL PORTRAITURE the photographer, does play a role in the process of taking a photograph. THROUGH THE LENS OF THE 19TH CENTURY Photography is clearly not a mirror of daily life: the fact that images are IRANIAN PHOTOGRAPHERS constructions is especially obvious in nineteenth-century studio portrait photography. Carmen Pérez González In Local Portraiture: Through the Lens of the 19th Century Iranian Photographers, ICAS prize-winning author, Carmen Pérez González is exploring how indigenous Iranian photographers constructed their own realities in contrast to how foreign photographers constructed Iranian's realities. Through an in-depth comparative visual analysis of 19th century Iranian portrait photography and Persian painting, the author arrives at the insight that aesthetic preferences correlate with socio-cultural habits and practices in writing, reading and looking. And, subsequently, she advocates for a place in a global history of photography of those unknown, local photo-histories (such as the Iranian one) and of the indigenous photographers that build it up. Carmen Pérez González is currently working as a research fellow at the “Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst” in Cologne. Carmen Pérez González Carmen Pérez WWW.LUP.NL 9 789087 281564 LEIDEN UNIVERSITY PRESS Local Portraiture Iranian Studies Series The Iranian Studies Series publishes high-quality scholarship on various aspects of Iranian civilisation, covering both contemporary and classical cultures of the Persian cultural area. The contemporary Persian-speaking area includes Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Central Asia, while classi- cal societies using Persian as a literary and cultural language were located in Anatolia, Caucasus, Central Asia and the Indo-Pakistani subcontinent. The objective of the series is to foster studies of the literary, historical, reli- gious and linguistic products in Iranian languages. In addition to research monographs and reference works, the series publishes English-Persian criti- cal text-editions of important texts. The series intends to publish resources and original research and make them accessible to a wide audience. Chief Editor: A.A. Seyed-Gohrab (Leiden University) Advisory Board of ISS: F. Abdullaeva (University of Cambridge) G.R. van den Berg (Leiden University) D.P. Brookshaw (Standford University) J.T.P. de Bruijn (Leiden University) N. Chalisova (Russian State University of Moscow) D. Davis (Ohio State University) F.D. Lewis (University of Chicago) L. Lewisohn (University of Exeter) S. McGlinn (Unaffiliated) Ch. Melville (University of Cambridge) D. Meneghini (University of Venice) N. Pourjavady (University of Tehran) Ch. van Ruymbeke (University of Cambridge) S. Sharma (Boston University) K. Talattof (University of Arizona) Z. Vesel (CNRS, Paris) R. Zipoli (University of Venice) Local Portraiture Through the Lens of the 19th-Century Iranian Photographers Carmen Pérez González Leiden University Press Cover design: Tarek Atrissi Design Layout: The DocWorkers, Almere ISBN 978 90 8728 156 4 e-ISBN 978 94 0060 077 5 e-ISBN 978 94 0060 078 2 (ePUB) NUR 630 / 652 © Carmen Pérez González / Leiden University Press, 2012 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written per- mission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. For my family: Luna, Mitra, Mani and Ali-Reza Darvish For my teachers: Prof. dr. Kitty Zijlmans, Dr. Helen Westgeest and Prof. dr. Just Jan Witkam To the memory of the Iranian photographer Bahman Jalali (Tehran, 1949-2010) and to his wife Rana Javadi Table of Contents Foreword 9 Acknowledgments 13 Acknowledgments for the images 17 Introduction 19 Brief Introduction to the History of Photography in Iran 27 1 Visual Laterality: The Relationship between the Direction of Writing and Composition 41 1.1 Definition of visual laterality 42 1.2 Nineteenth-century Iranian portrait photography 45 1.3 Visual brain and visual perception in art 55 1.4 Asymmetries of the photographic space: Brain mechanisms or artistic conventions? 59 1.5 Reading habits versus aesthetic preferences: A neurological approach 62 2 The Written Image: Text and Photography 71 2.1 Persian calligraphy and type of scripts 71 2.2 Text and nineteenth-century Iranian portrait studio photography: Type of script versus content and meaning of the inscription 75 3 Pose, Gesture and Objects Held by the Sitter 105 3.1 Gesture, posture and pose 105 3.2 Pose and gesture in the Persian painting tradition 112 3.3 Pose and objects held by the sitter in nineteenth-century Iranian portrait photography 119 4 Arrangement of Space 131 4.1 Spatial characteristics of Persian miniature painting 131 4.2 The use of space in Persian miniature painting 140 4.3 The use of space in nineteenth-century photography in Iran 146 5 Interactions between Western and Iranian Photography 155 5.1 Schema of positions in portrait photography 155 5.2 Western photographers versus local sitters: Photographing the Other 157 5.3 Interaction between Western and Iranian photographers 165 5.4 Hybridity versus Appropriation 178 8 LOCAL PORTRAITURE Conclusion 189 Afterword 193 Bibliography 195 Appendix: Photo Chronology 209 About the author 215 Index 217 Photos 221 Foreword When Carmen Pérez González asked me to write a foreword to this book, I readily accepted. Carmen had just successfully completed her doctoral dissertation at Leiden University, the Netherlands, and was awarded her PhD on 2 February 2010. What started a good four years ago, when Carmen Pérez knocked on our door presenting her ideas for a dissertation, grew into an important and very interesting PhD thesis which has now re- sulted in this book containing a comparative visual analysis of nineteenth- century Iranian portrait photography and Persian painting. How does a Spanish woman with a Masters in Astrophysics from Barcelona University end up studying for a PhD comparing the photogra- phy and painting of Iran in Leiden? Her interest in photography was al- ready there but, after two-and-a-half years traveling overland from Turkey to China, she returned home a skilled photographer with over sixty rolls of film. A catalogue for a solo exhibition on the often hard physical labor per- formed by women in Asia followed, as well as a study in Fine Arts (Photography) at Barcelona University. The choice of Iran was fuelled by her knowledge and love of the country, its language and culture, which she had come to know well through her Iranian husband. Her coming to Leiden was understandable because Leiden University houses an impress- ive collection of photographs and teaches in this field, as well as being re- nowned for its expertise in Middle Eastern studies. The decisive factor in her choice of subject matter was, however, the fact that the history of photography in Iran, especially the early period, had been largely over- looked by Western photography historians. Moreover, besides the well- known Western photographers (including Ernst Hoeltzer of Germany) who have worked in Iran since the early days of photography, she also discov- ered a wealth of Iranian photographers, all with their own idiosyncrasies. It was precisely the specificity of cultural backgrounds and practices that caught her interest. In order to fully understand the cultural embeddedness of practices used in photography and composition, she undertook a com- parative analysis with the rich tradition of Persian painting. Through an in- depth comparative visual analysis of nineteenth-century portrait photogra- phy and Persian (miniature) painting Carmen Pérez arrived at, and substan- tiated, the insight that aesthetic preferences correlate with socio-cultural ha- bits and practices in writing, reading and looking. She also revealed the nature of this relationship. The direction of writing, for instance, proved to be one of the culturally defined elements in a photograph. Whereas in the West pictures are “read” from left to right (the direction of writing of all Western languages), Carmen Pérez’ analysis shows that the opposite in fact 10 LOCAL PORTRAITURE applies in Iran/Persia, where Farsi is written from right to left. Consequently, Iranian photographers produce “mirror images” of those made by Western photographers. This is supported by studies in the field of visual laterality in neuropsychology and perception psychology, which are crucial in building a theoretical framework for exploring this phenom- enon. Furthermore, she made discoveries regarding spatial arrangement, poses and attributes, and the use of text within the space of the image, the latter underscoring the importance of poetry, not only in former Persia but in modern Iran too. The corpus of work grew over the years, and the photographs now num- ber in their thousands. Each time we met, Carmen Pérez proudly showed us yet another stack of photos, albums and books, ardently collected with the aid of numerous friends and colleagues, who purchased books in Iran and elsewhere. The collection is still growing in both size and importance. The numbers reveal the great interest in photography among nineteenth- century Iranian photographers, the quality their