In this image, a partially nude woman covers her breasts with lemons while posing in front of an Ottoman fountain surrounded by colorful tilework. The composition evokes nineteenth-century European Orientalist paintings in which the imagined exoticism or “otherness” of the Middle East reflected a Western fantasy of the “Orient,” especially its women. Such paintings frequently employed the theme of the harem, depicted with richly decorated interiors, to conjure an erotic image of the odalisque or female slave, generally shown in a supine or otherwise vulnerable position, looking away from the viewer. The actual setting is the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum in Jerusalem, in a fountain niche decorated with tiles by David Ohannessian from around 1934. While this photograph recalls a favorite Orientalist theme of women of the harem bathing, the model’s pose, staring brazenly outward, suggests that she is complicit in the perhaps satirically constructed scene. Lines of Persian poetry by the famed feminist/humanist poet Forough Farrokhzad are framed below the image, referencing the artist’s Iranian heritage and the enduring legacy of her ancestry. Tal Shochat was born and raised in Netanya and has become known for her portrait-like photographs of single trees as well as theatrically staged figures, as in this print.

• Komaroff, Linda, Stephanie Rouinfar, Sandra Williams, and Sarah Mostafa Ahmed. Women Defining Women in Contemporary Art of the Middle East and Beyond. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2023. https://archive.org/details/women-defining-women (accessed January 12, 2024).

• Komaroff, Linda. Islamic Art Now: Contemporary Art of the Middle East. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2015.

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