Exhibition Reviewed by NY Review of Books

ISAW's current exhibition, The Eye of the Shah: Qajar Court Photography and the Persian Past, was insightfully reviewed by Christopher de Bellaigue in The New York Review of Books. Here's an excerpt:

The photographs in “Eye of the Shah” are filled with humanity: self-love, pretension, tyranny, hesitancy, and charm. The exhibition’s two hundred-odd images were executed for the most part by a small number of court and portrait photographers using an ultra-modern medium in a land still run according to the divine writ of kings, where the Shah’s harem contained hundreds of wives, concubines, and eunuchs, and many people continued to keep slaves. It’s in this confrontation—between the bastinado and the wet collodion method—that the principal interest of “Eye of the Shah” lies.

Find the entire article on The New York Review of Books website: Persia: The Court at Twilight. 

And just last Thursday, ISAW exhibitions director Jennifer Chi discussed the exhibition on The Leonard Lopate Show. Listen to Jennifer here.

The Eye of the Shah is on view through January 17, 2016.  

Gallery Hours: Wednesday-Sunday 11am-6pm, Friday 11am-8pm, Closed Monday and Tuesday.