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.
