I chose the photo ‘New Acquisition: Mitra Tabrizian, Tehran’ (2006)
The general content of the photo are female figures and one child fully covered in black walking in across the frame to the right and arranged almost as a circle. In the background are two large buildings and a giant billboard of two men looming over them with arabic on the top appearing to be watching them. On first glance the composition reminded me of a high fashion runway show, but the tone of the painting is ominous and has primarily cool tones. The photographer is also a filmmaker and drew inspiration from contemporary Iranian cinema using ordinary people who she directed their placement, attitude, and movement. In this photograph she gives a feeling of displacement and disorder.
The photographer uses subjects from the area as her models and places them into position – in this case intentionally, to evoke disorder even though there is an elliptical arrangement on the picture plane that unifies them.