Forough Alaei in Time Magazine:
Of the many paradoxes presented by the Islamic Republic of Iran, the most confounding remains its stubborn preoccupation with regulating women. The 1979 revolution that brought fundamentalist clerics to power in an ancient, diverse, and cosmopolitan nation also stripped women there of the right to hold a job without the permission of her husband, or wear what she chooses in public. The friction from that grinding repression ignited a conflagration in the last months of 2022 that threatened to destroy the regime. Being spontaneous, the rebellion gathered behind the slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom” and was billed as leaderless. In truth, it was led by thousands.
“Oppression is the norm in a society as long as it lacks a role-model who breaks the taboo,” says photojournalist Forough Alaei. “This project is the story of Iranian role models.” Over the course of two years, Alaei traveled her native country documenting the women who, like the late Mahsa Amini facing arrest by “morality police,” simply refused. Her subjects are the generation who came of age online, seeing on their phones how people lived elsewhere, with no hope of joining them. Many have found an outlet in sports—for decades a testing ground for gender equality in the Islamic Republic, where women were not even allowed in the same stadium as men.
More here.
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