Thursday, June 07, 2007

Skewed

One thing that must really anger overseas Iranians is the depiction of Iran in the Western media. When we were in Islamabad we came across an old Newseek that had a cover story on Iran. To be honest the lead article was quite interesting and portrayed Iran in an occasionally favourable light, but the accompanying photo essay called "Modern Life in Iran" was presented in stark black and white and was HIGHLY selective. The image below for example shows young women in full chadors looking cowed and anxious in front of the infamous murals along the wall of the "US Den of Espionage" (the former US embassy):

We were walking along said wall this afternoon on our way to the Iranian Artists Forum when we snapped this picture which we would like to offer as a counterpoint (note trendy tight fitting manteau, lipstick and fringe - apologies for lack of focus). This is fairly standard attire for Tehrani women and we were wondering today whether the hijab police would even bother patrolling here given the number of potential offenders.

We would also like to offer the following snapshot from one of the galleries inside the fantastic forum:

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