Dr. Ali Behdad, UCLA literature professor and director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies, gave a talk titled “The Right to Look: Photography and Colonial Vision” on Nov. 14 at Pomona College’s Rose Hills Theater, addressing the ways photography perpetuates power dynamics.
Behdad argued that the very origins of photography in the Middle East were created to uphold a colonial relation of power, specifically by the British and French empires.
“[The talk centered around] understanding both the past and contemporary history of photography and the photograph as a weapon and gaze, either for or against white supremacist racialization,” Zyad Sibai PO ’25, co-president of the Pomona Student Union (PSU), said.
The event, organized and moderated by Nadia Hsu PO ’27, board member of PSU, aimed to make this critical history accessible to students.
“[In organizing this talk] I tried to find ways to make this history feel accessible and relevant to students, not too academic and distant,” Hsu said.
Behdad’s presentation encompassed both landscape and portrait depictions of the Middle East. He explained how people often view photography as an objective art.
Historically, landscape photographs of the Middle East often portray a religious and reflective utopia frozen in time. Others depict big deserts and city ruins, which perpetuate the idea that the Middle Eastern culture is a stagnant backdrop, one that is no longer progressing.
“I found it really interesting when he talked about how Europeans would take photos of ruins and use them to show an ‘Oriental’ country as stuck in the past, in order to justify their exploitation or occupation of that country,” Hsu said.
These photos acted as catalysts for colonial powers to view the Middle East as a civilization in need of their help. Portrait photographers, and oftentimes the viewer, exoticize street merchants and clothed women. Behdad pointed out that the popularization of these images was largely due to tourist postcards and collectible photographs.
“What stuck with me the most, and what I hope people in the audience took away, was how central images are to power and to everything we experience and consume,” Hsu said.
“Europeans would take photos of ruins and use them to show an ‘Oriental’ country as stuck in the past, in order to justify their exploitation or occupation of that country.”
Hsu said that the talk made clear that there is no neutral way of looking at people, so reproduced portraits can never be looked at neutrally either. Specifically for these photographs, rooted in white colonial powers, there will always be an implication of a power imbalance.
“Photography as an art form can be a tool of surveillance and a tool of resistance, both of which can be weaponized to represent a ‘truth,’” Sibai said.
Behdad ended the presentation with a series of artists who have used photography to try to progress the feminist movement within the Middle East. One such photographer Shirin Neshat covered her subjects’ bodies in henna of feminist scriptures and poems as an act of resistance against the fetishization of Middle Eastern women. Behdad pointed out the normalization of this colonial lens.
He outlined the progression from the tourist postcards and the messages they pushed, to modern-day art forms still being misinterpreted by professionals.
Following the presentation, Hsu spoke with Behdad about the relevance of photography in today’s world. Behdad said we need to bear witness to the images we consume online, and how it is the responsibility of the viewer to scrutinize them.
“What he said can definitely be applied to everyone who constantly, on a daily level, consumes photos of violence or suffering on our social media or news feeds … using the idea of the camera as a weapon as a framework to look at the photos coming out of Gaza and Lebanon,” Hsu said.
Students participated in the discussion, asking for advice on how to navigate a world where images can be too subjective.
“One of the things that Dr. Behdad emphasized was how really pervasive Orientalist narratives still are. We need to not look at Orientalism and colonialism and their visual products as only objects of study, only things distant from us.” Hsu said.
“Consumers of art and consumers of photography [should] challenge their own gaze and understand that objectivity in photographs is never real,” Sibai said.
Editor’s note: Nadia Hsu is the Arts & Culture Columns Editor on TSL’s senior staff.
Facebook Comments