Iran: Women Only

Iran: Women Only focuses on the contemporary women of Iran, with a look back at the early work of the artist started almost four decades ago. Goodman began her photojournalism career in Iran covering the occupation of the US Embassy in Tehran just months after hundreds of Iranian students took 52 Americans hostage. 

In producing this exhibit, Goodman chose to return to Iran in 2015 to search for many of those she photographed decades earlier, and to photograph Iran in yet another pivotal time in US-Iran relations - - the signing of the Iran Nuclear Agreement. But, the ravages of war and time lead to records lost, faded friendships and discoveries of others thought to have perished. Despite this, Goodman shows us two women she managed to track down, both who were among those behind the Embassy takeover. One appears in the B&W photo titled “Embassy Women,” taken in 1980. Now thirty-five years later, her updated portrait captures her regal bearing as the country’s first female vice president. 

Goodman contrasts her historic images, shown in B&W, with her color images of women in contemporary Iran, revealing a defiant modernism emblematic of the changing image of women in Iran today. 

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.