Gender Representation in the Painting and Photography during the Naseri Era based on John Szarkowski's Theory

The visual art of the Naseri era is a mixture of the painting tradition of the first Qajar school and the confrontation with modern Western achievements, including the new medium of photography. In fact, the conceptual basis of the visual arts of this period can be seen as the product of the interaction of different forces that affect the issue of representation as well as the representation of gender. Although the representation of the human body and its gendered meanings is still a major concern in the visual art of the Nasserite era, these representations are fundamentally different from those of earlier periods. The main question of this research is to investigate the quality of gender representation in painting and photography of the Naseri period and the differences in essence of these two representation systems in presenting the image of gender. To answer this question, descriptive-analytical method as well as historical comparison has been used and to formulate and analyze the special capabilities and possibilities of photographic image in order to represent gender differently than painting, Szarkowski's ontological theory has been adopted. The statistical population of study are court portraits of the era of Fath Ali Shah and the collection of paintings and photographs of the period of Nasser al-Din Shah that are exemplary and have a prominent representation of gender. Findings show photography introduced a new system of representation of gender in the period, which has no precedent in Iranian painting. The camera provided a picture of gender through coordinates such as engaging with the "the thing itself", "detail", "time", "frame" and "vantage point", as opposed to the stereotypes of gender representation in painting; Realism instead of idealism.