Women’s Agency and Ontology in Nineteenth-Century Iranian Photography

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