Publisher's Synopsis
"This study argues that photographs from Qajar Iran (1785-1925) of harem women, royal women, and public women, such as sex workers, musicians, singers, and dancers, make profound statements on the institution of the harem in a time of flux and modernization. Depictions of the harem in photographs shifted the scopic regime of power and made visible an Iranian "Sultanate of Women," which produced a short succession of formidable, driven women. These photographs became instrumental as a "mirror for princesses," in which women consolidated their political control by fashioning their images, constructing pictures of female rule, leaving a legacy and blueprint for future heads of harem, and bolstering their positions within the harem, the court, the state, and the global arena. Thus, photography played a major role as an ontic condition that would further reformulate perceptions of harem women's ontological Being in the world, resulting in ph
