Untitled (from "Women of Allah" series)

Shirin Neshat’s photographs, video installations, and feature films are grounded in her experiences as an immigrant and exile from Iran living in the United States. In her work, people navigate symbolic narratives that mirror the impact of the political on personal realities. This image was taken during Neshat’s final trip to Iran in 1995. The trip ended with the artist’s interrogation at the Tehran airport. While detained, Neshat had in her luggage the contact sheets of what would become the third and final set of her Women of Allah photographs. They are the only works that Neshat has ever made on Iranian soil. The pictures, often known as “the garden photos,” feature groups of women posed in front of photographic backdrops of gardens, direct references to the nineteenth-century photography of Iran’s Qajar dynasty.