Photographs of Arab Women

I'll be going to see this show of photos of Arab women from the Arab world taken over the last century at the gallery SF Camerawork | In the Gallery Now.

Update: One of the curators comments (below) that I did indeed misread the objectives of the show. I made my comments based on the San Francisco Chronicle write-up - now that is lousy reporting on my part. I should know better than to let the Chronicle define for me what the show is all about. My apologies to the curators; I will go see the show, delete the snarkiest part of my comment, and let the exhibition speak for itself. And I won't pre-review shows in the future based on second-hand reports!

A 1940s Hollywood glamour girl wannabe in Egypt throws a practiced ‘come hither’ look over her bare shoulder at the camera. A serious young Lebanese woman poses for a portrait dressed like an English gentleman in a pinstriped suit. The Arab pop music equivalent of Charo wears a traditional headscarf with a wry expression. These images and more gleaned from the archive of the Arab Image Foundation in Beirut are the subject of a fascinating new multimedia installation entitled "Not Given: Talking of and Around Photographs of Arab Women" on view at SF Camerawork. Using a soundscape of recorded voices, projected large-scale images and photographic prints, the installation unveils stereotypes and examines how the authority of photography can get lost in translation. This is the only U.S. venue for this thought-provoking show curated by local art historian and critical theorist Dore Bowen and French media artist Isabelle Massu.

I do scratch my head, however, at the breathless description of the purpose of the show. See Arab women cross-dressing! Unveiled! Scantily clad! Those poor Arab women, they used to be liberated and now they're all veiled and oppressed! Look at these pictures, they are so surprising! Arab women aren't all just hiding under burqas! They have intense, modern cultural interests that have been documented for the last hundred years - what a shock!

The curators don't seem to have a subscription to dish satellite, where they could watch Arab pop stars cavort,. Maybe the curators aren't aware of this political music video made by a woman, who makes fun of Bush's foreign policy while squirming and posing. Maybe these curators have never seen a Lebanese game show, or watched women news anchors on Gulf tv stations. And possibly these curators just don't have a fucking clue about any modern woman in the Arab world since at least the rise of feminism in Egypt in the 1920s.

Or maybe I just misread their intentions. (UPDATE - Yes, I did. The perils of blogging. Some off-the-cuff remark of mine actually gets read! Sheesh. That's why they say bloggers need editors. My apologies again to the curators.)

Comments

[isabelle massu]

Yes you definitly misread our intention. and probably decided that since we were two occidental women, we had to think "that" occidental way...
By the way, a lot of my friends are veiled and feminist. Who's making a statement here ?

[Leila]

I think I was reacting to the newspaper report about the show, not the show itself. My comments will be edited to reflect this - I need to see the show and let the curators' work speak for itself.

I apologize for my snarkiness, Isabelle. THe images look amazing and I am very grateful that they are being exhibited.

[oso]

Thanks for your write-up and the update - I'm gonna go check it out when I can.