The challenge of the private-public sphere of Qajar era women's life in the frame of pictures

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Department of History, Faculty of Literature and Language, Al-Zahra University, Tehran, Iran

2 Department of History. Faculty of Literature and Languages, Al-Zahra University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

The duality of private-public arena is one of the important dualities of women's historiography. The different forms of this duality can be seen in the lives of women in the modern and also in Iran during the Qajar era, especially in the photographs. In the Qajar period, taking pictures of women was very slow, which was due to the patriarchal and religious nature of the Qajar era. The problem of the present research is whether the entry of the camera into the privacy of Iranian homes has changed the boundaries of this privacy (from the Naseri era onwards) or not? In order to answer this question, the recorded images of women in the period from the early stages of photography to Iran until the constitutional revolution have been analyzed with a historical and analytical approach. By examining the mass of women's photos, we will finally come to the conclusion that due to its representative feature, photography has been able to bring out the women enclosed behind the inner walls to some extent, and the camera has been able to challenge the boundaries of this duality by recording women's images. and changed the private space to some extent. This change may not be very significant compared to the transformations of photographing men, but its analysis in the Qajar era society shows that just being in front of the camera created a challenge in their private lives. These pictures remained in private albums for many years until the woman was finally revealed.

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