Shirin Neshat is an Iranian born contemporary visual artist who lives in New York. Much of her work explores the relationship between women and the religious and cultural value systems of Islam. The particular series I am interested in is the photographs in her book- ‘Women of Allah.’ A lot of Neshat’s work stems from her trying to come to terms with the ‘new’ Iran after she returned there after living in the USA for several years. Her work covers all aspects of the Islamic identity, in this series ‘Women of Allah’ she has written over the top of the subjects faces in Arabic adding a sense of depth to the images.

Several of the images, for example, the one above, show violent motifs such as a gun or knife. This could be Neshat trying to hint a brutal side of Islam, this paired with the subject’s expression inflicts a sense of desperation and vulnerability onto the image.

When asked why she chose to portray women instead of men she states:

‘In Islam, a woman’s body has been historically a type of battleground for various kinds of rhetoric and political ideology. Much about a culture and its identity can be gleaned from the status and circumstances of its women, such as the roles they play in the society, the rights they enjoy or don’t, and the dress codes to which they adhere. Also, a Muslim woman projects more intensely the paradoxical realities that I am trying to identify. Each image is constructed to magnify contradiction. The traditionally feminine traits such as beauty and innocence on one hand and cruelty, violence, and hatred on the other coexist within the complex structure of Islam itself.’

For my project, I have decided to only photograph females who were born in the year 2000, so much like Neshat I have chosen a sub-group within a sub-group. I chose this particular sub-group as I am a female born in 2000 as well so it is a personal subject to me, I have always been interested in the vast array of different identities within our age group. Also, the age 18 has always been romanticised for me, it is a milestone- every one of my subjects has become an ‘official’ adult this year and I thought it was important to see the shift in identity which comes with this adulthood. Like Neshat I also want to incorporate text into some of my images, I plan to make graphic collages like you see in magazines to inflict a playful, youthful mood. But I also want to make more mature, hard-hitting images like Neshat so I plan to capture close up portraits of my subjects and then ask them three set questions and get them to handwrite their response. Then I want to overlay this handwriting onto my subjects face like the work in ‘Women of Allah.’ By putting the text over their faces this slightly obscures their physical identity, this makes the reader have to come closer to read some of the texts which reveals a deeper part of their identity- their values, thoughts and feelings.

My initial responses to Neshat’s work: