I decided to tell my story through that of others—those who lived in the past,” "the Iranian-born photographer Amak Mahmoodian writes about Zanjir, a selection from which is presented here. At 27, Mahmoodian emigrated to the United Kingdom to pursue a Ph.D.; her work connects personal history, cultural identity, and the archive. (“Zanjir” means “chain” in Persian.)
In 2004, when Mahmoodian
visited the archives at Iran’s
Golestan Palace—a royal
compound that is now a
museum—she came across
photographs taken by Iran’s
former king Naser al-Din
Shah Qajar with a camera
that Queen Victoria gave
him in 1842. In Mahmoodian’s
hands, these nearly two-
hundred-year-old portraits
are reprised, among other
things, as masks worn by her
own family and friends—a
merging of past and present.
– eugenia bell
