Visual Culture Archives - Ajam Media Collective

We Apologize for the Temporary Inconvenience: Capturing Baku’s Not-so-Ephemeral Public Banners

July 18, 2017
by Rustin Zarkar
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In order to mask the unsightly building process, Baku City Hall has placed banners on the fences and barriers that run along the construction sites. “We Apologize for the Temporary Inconvenience” highlights the imposed artificiality displacing the actual image of the city.

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The Studio of Behnaz Karjoo, an Iranian-American Master of the Islamic Art of Illumination

I sat across from Behnaz Karjoo as she outlined the gold flowers of her Hilya with a fine brush at her New York studio. Tazhib (or tezhip or tadhhib in…

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Long Form

A TV Show for the Rouhani Era: Shahrzad and the 1953 Coup d’etat in Iran

August 15, 2016
by Ajam Media Collective
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Shahrzad, a historical series directed by Hassan Fathi, reveals how the 1953 Coup is still the site of competing historiographical narratives.

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Photo Essay

(Red)Framing Baku: Photographing Urban Change in Azerbaijan’s Capital

June 23, 2016
by Rustin Zarkar
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Ahmad Muxtar’s Red Frame not only documents Baku’s rapid urban transformation, but also explores the ways our perceptions of urban space are framed by social, political, and economic forces.

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Long Form

See You In Tehran: Tips for the Summer Traveler in Iran’s Capital

With more and more tourists visiting Iran every day, Ajam and See You In Iran have teamed up to bring you a travel series to Iran’s diverse cities. This first installation focuses on the vibrant urban life of Tehran, Iran’s largest city and capital.

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Long Form

Translating Game of Thrones into Turkish: The Man who Brought Jon Snow to Turkey

May 4, 2016
by Asher Kohn
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Turkey’s Game of Thrones mania is due to one college student. He goes by the Twitter handle of @esekherif_.

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Podcast

Narges Bajoghli on Paramilitary Cultural Producers of the Iran-Iraq War

September 27, 2015
by Rustin Zarkar
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In another installment of the Emerging Scholarship series, Narges Bajoghli talks about Paramilitary Media during and after the Iran-Iraq War. Bajoghli explains the rise of war veteran filmmakers who have produced alternative narratives about the eight-year conflict in order to better communicate the “truth of war” to a younger generation of Iranians.

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Long Form

Picturing the Other: Race and Afro-Iranians in Documentary Photography

July 20, 2015
by Beeta Baghoolizadeh
4 comments

These types of documentary ventures, both filmic and photographic, identify a racialized community as their subject, visibly recognizable by their visual characteristics. Despite this clear reliance on race, there is rarely much attention given to the issue of race itself. Instead, most tend to emphasize successful assimilation predicated on nationalist sentiments and champion the diversity of these communities. By ignoring race and its relationship to photography, we overlook crucial elements that have structured similar stories in the past.

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Long Form

Bailout: Exploring Credit Card Debt and the Iranian-American Immigrant Experience

Set amid the financial collapse of 2009, Bailout follows the story of Shalah or “Shay,” an Iranian-American woman living in Philadelphia, who struggles to hide her own entrapment in the most American of traditions — credit card debt — from her family members who all harbor their own untold secrets.

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