Last year photographer Amir Normandi mounted an exhibit in his Pilsen gallery of photos by students depicting the daily life of women in Iran. Normandi had smuggled the images out in early 2001, and the show, “Hejab Exposition,” attracted a fair amount of interest and an invitation to bring it to Harper College, where it was up for eight days last February. In the spring Normandi proposed another installation to Harper’s international studies coordinator Richard Johnson. He says he told Johnson that the photos would be shot in Chicago and that they would portray “defiance of the hejab,” explaining that he sees the garment as a vehicle and symbol of oppression–a “solitary cell for women.”
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Johnson agreed to pay Normandi $2,500 for the proposed exhibit–$1,250 up front and the rest to come when the show opened. Normandi, who makes a living doing business portraits and passport photos in his studio at Jackson and State, set about taking some of the photos himself, using models in his studio. A Muslim who came to the United States from Iran in 1979, married an American, and says his family is directly descended from Muhammad, Normandi feels an obligation to “correct some things” imposed by his forefathers, including the assumption that a woman is not a “whole person” with equal rights. “My notion is that if my mother and sister and everybody else’s mother and sister are oppressed, people have to be informed about it,” he says.
Johnson, who describes himself as a card-carrying member of the ACLU, says the issue is contractual, not a First Amendment matter. He says he was expecting something “in a photojournalistic vein of women in Iran defying hejab and possibly suffering consequences–something with a political context.” What he got, he says, were “gratuitously offensive” images that “involved a considerable amount of nudity and very little intellectual content. They were taken by non-Muslim photographers, involving non-Muslim models.” After objections came in, Johnson says, he first covered the nude images (because children were going through the hall to music lessons) and then, when the Muslim student association complained, covered the whole show. He says he offered Normandi a chance to remount, in a closed gallery, the kind of show Johnson originally thought he was getting. Normandi refused. What’s happened since, Johnson says, is “a huge publicity stunt on [Normandi’s] part.” (After the Daily Herald reported that the show was down, Normandi issued a press release, and several television stations showed up at the forum.)
No Veil Is Required
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Joeff Davis.
