From Photojournalism to Painting: Afghani Women's Eyes Upon Our Recent Days

 

It is difficult, nowadays, to watch TV or read the newspapers without seeing thousands of eyes in flux wondering “Why?”  

The iconic 1984 photographic portrait by Steve McCurry of Sharbat Bibi has influenced a generation of photojournalists and street photographers. Eyes that said “What is next?”

… Almost by impulse, I decided to paint, always on wild rabbit skin, eyes that reflect my impressions of today’s questions.

As a photographer, I often chose the left-to-right angle for portraiture. Just life with the Latin alphabet, our eyes are trained to go from left to right when scanning a photo or an environment. But Chinese and Japanese writing is top-to-bottom, Arabic Abjad goes right to left, and the Hebrew Ktav Ashuri or alphabet goes right to left on horizontal lines. I have found that when showing my photography in different parts of the world, the interpretation and appreciation of these B&W photos are directly influenced on the direction of the writing in each culture. The lookers’ eyes scan photos up to down, left to right or right to left.

So, for this painting I decided to go right to left.

 

… Here are the eyes. This time I wanted a pale look, so instead of using oil and acrylic, I opted for watercolour. I think it gives the look a depth.

 

While I knew a veil would follow the theme as I have painted in my previous works, I was not sure about the head covering. I first tried rabbit tails, but it looked western and almost Russian:

 

A squirrel skin got me closer to a cloth. I used the rabbit tails for contrast around the ears and atop the head cover:

It was now time to add a few feminine accouterments. I used turquoise stones for a front pendenent made earrings out of butterfly wings:

 

In this painting the veil is more than a cover, it represent harsher moments. So I sprinkled crushed stone and sand on the wet acrylic paint.

 As for the frame, a square one helps focusing on the eyes as they are in the middle of that frame. The rabbit skin needed to be trimmed to fit the frame:

This portraiture painting/sculpting of a veiled woman is a departure from previous ones I have done where the eyes were inviting, alluring and teasing. In this case, the look (I believe) represents moments in our days that are neither inviting, alluring nor teasing.

It represents a question.

 

September 19, 2021

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2021