WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
Amak Mahmoodian’s Zanjir, Arnolfini Bristol
Past struggles of Iranian women linked with present in striking series of images
Zanjir by Amak Mahmoodian
JAMES CROSSLEY applauds a lucid biography of the German radical preacher who reemerged as a hero in the GDR
Prizes all round: the Bard hands plaudits to the Miners Gala, OT&JC, Joe Solo, Black Sabbath’s frontman and the Lionesses
Star cartoonist JAMIE BRITTON is in awe of a graphic novel of epic proportions that explores class, religion and globalisation via the strange cultivation of Ginseng in the US Midwest
GUILLERMO THOMAS is intrigued by a history of the Middle East that demonstrates how promising post colonial beginnings were snuffed out by Western imperialist interests
MARIA DUARTE recommends the intricate study of a high-performance and highly dysfuntional German family
ZANJIR in Farsi literally means “chain.” But it can also have the sense of “paired/coupled” and that distinction is particularly significant in understanding Amak Mahmoodian’s photographic compositions.
In some, Mahmoodian’s female relatives obscure their faces with photographs that she has dug up at the Golestan archives in Tehran of kings’ wives, harem women and their relatives from the time of the Qajar dynasty which lasted from 1781 to 1925.
These are some of the earliest images of Iranian photography and, by altering the true identities of the subjects, Mahmoodian creates a kind of time machine that links the past with the present and future over considerable expanses of time and space.
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