Through critical reappropriation, Afshar reclaims a colonial photographic legacy
fixated on the veiled woman. The Fold is a critical visual and psychological
investigation into the enduring legacy of Orientalist and colonialist
photographic practices, and the ways in which these gazes continue to shape how
bodies—particularly veiled Islamic bodies—are seen, archived, and consumed. This
new body of work by Iranian artist Hoda Afshar takes as its starting point the
vast archive of Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault (1872–1934), a French psychiatrist
and photographer who, in the early 20th century, produced thousands of images of
veiled women—and sometimes men—in Morocco. Encountered by Afshar during her
research at the musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac in Paris, these
photographs were originally used by de Clérambault to support psychoanalytic
theories around fantasy, covering, and desire, all filtered through a deeply
colonial lens.
