In her "Updating a Family Album" series Malekeh Nayiny begins with black-and-white photos of relatives in Iran and adds, somewhat anachronistically, to the staid compositions brilliantly colored decorative patterns and inventive props and backgrounds, which have the effect of providing a novel context for her family members. She has said of her work, "I have used computer technology as a kind of time machine to update my family album, to lend it more color and life, to renovate and revive it." Her intention was not only to see her relatives in a new light but also to assimilate the different pieces of her own past, including early-twentieth-century Iranian postage stamps of exotic birds, which had been collected by her father.